Spring break treks, cool bookstores, great libraries, LA stories

SealBeachDaily.com is giving away a copy of Great Escapes: Southern California this week, just in time for your spring staycation.

Just picked up Great Destinations: Palm Springs and Desert Resorts by Christopher P. Baker. Nicely written. Baker clearly knows his turf.

Chronicle Books twitters about this lovely photo gallery: The most interesting bookstores of the world. From San Francisco to Paris to Calcutta, these bookstores are ideal destinations for book lovers.

Library Journal showcases the nation’s “star” libraries, including sixteen here in California.

The Los Angeles Music Center invites Angelenos to share their life stories and oral histories this month. The theme: “Journeys Toward Justice.”

The beauty of fresh and local: Gotta love Kate Cohen’s delightful slide show from one of SoCal’s newest farmers markets.

Savoring the holiday weekend in SoCal

I did an interview this week with LAist Editor Zach Behrens, who asked about SoCal getaways for the holiday weekend and my new project, the Seal Beach Daily website.

On long weekends I like to escape up the coast or plan a kickback retreat to the desert. But this tumultuous season of fires, storms and economic meltdowns feels like a good time to stick closer to home. So I suggested a handful of day trips. Among them: the California landscape exhibit at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Orange County’s timeless Crystal Cove. Southern California’s other Wine Country. Bargain hunting in LA’s Fashion District.

Browse the entire LAist interview here.

More buzz: Check out Shelby Grad’s nice take today on the LAist interview at the LAT’s LA Now blog. Michelle Vranizan Rafter also writes about Seal Beach Daily at the excellent Word Count website.

**Photo of the Seal Beach Pier by Kate Cohen/Seal Beach Daily

Playing hooky in Laguna Beach

As Southern California’s Indian summer blazes on, now is an ideal time for Laguna Beach getaway. Perched midway between LA and San Diego, Laguna is one of SoCal’s most picturesque beach towns, a lush tangle of palms and runaway bougainvillea snaking across stucco walls and tiled roofs along Pacific Coast Highway.

Tourists and SoCal revelers overrun the city during summer (and on holiday weekends throughout the year) when traffic crawls, parking is impossible, and the sidewalks downtown disappear beneath the crush of more people than they were ever meant to hold. During fall, though, Laguna exhales. It’s the time of year the locals love best, when this Orange County beach town of 24,000 goes back to being a welcoming Shangri-la again. On weekdays, the beach sits tantalizingly empty.

For starters, check out the waves at Thalia Street, an easy-to-miss cul de sac where a curving set of steps leads to the sand below. It’s a sweet spot: Locals come to here to surf and skim-board. The downside: there’s no parking lot, so you’ll have to hunt for a spot on a nearby street.

If you’re feeling energetic, set out for walk along the beach. Or head to Laguna Canyon Road and hike through the inland wilds of Laguna Coast Wilderness Park. Or grab a triple latte and hit the sidewalks to sample Laguna’s art galleries and one-of-kind boutiques. There’s a slew of shops and restaurants clustered downtown, close to Main Beach and its famous basketball courts on the sand. But don’t stop there. Many of Laguna’s treasures are scattered farther south along Coast Highway, away from the touristy hub.

In the 1200 block of Coast Highway, for instance, you’ll find a wonderfully eclectic mix at the Old Pottery Place, including delicious world cuisine and an outdoor patio at Sapphire; gourmet picnic fixings at the adjacent Sapphire pantry; and the friendly Laguna Beach Books. Across the street, the Rooftop Lounge at the La Casa Del Camino serves up mojitos and prime views of the coastline.

If you’re up for a splurge, book a room — or just make lunch reservations — at the Surf and Sand Hotel, a landmark resort carved into the side of an oceanfront cliff. The waves are so close, so intense, that the sound of pounding surf seems to follows you everywhere at the Surf and Sand.

For dinner: Treat yourself to Eva’s, a delectable Carribbean kitchen in a South Laguna cottage. The restaurant is a riot of color — lime green walls, orange ceiling, small pink lights twinkling in the palms — and softly lit by the sea of candles that line the dining room. So warm. So fun.

Before you go: Request a Visitor’s Guide from the Laguna Beach Visitors Bureau. This slim (free) volume tucks easily into a pocket.

Don’t forget: Bring a pocketful of quarters. Laguna Beach has meters all over town and you’ll need change to park.

P.S. Here’s a map.

Summer Staycation

The LA Times business section looks at this summer’s travel trend — the staycation. Faced with sky-high gas prices, many Southern California travelers are planning getaways close to home. Hotel reservations here are up from last summer (by 9 percent, says the Times) and families are loading up the car and driving to area theme parks and attractions that don’t involve costly air travel.

Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., said Southern California might have a unique advantage over other major regions of the nation in weathering the downturn in travel.

“You have 21 million people in Southern California, so there is a big market right in your own backyard,” Kyser said. At the same time, “there are a lot of things to partake in without going far such as Catalina Island. Our backyard is a pretty exotic and fun place.”

Booksellers are seeing a renewed interest in close-to-home travel books. At the Barnes and Noble Marina Pacifica in Long Beach, for example, community events director Cindy Patterson has created a special SoCal travel table and shoppers are snapping up her selections. I’m delighted that Cindy’s picks include Great Escapes: Southern California.

*Photo: a slice of Malibu’s spectacular coast, courtesy of Veronique de Turenne. Malibu is one of the cool getaways featured in Great Escapes: Southern California.

Great Escapes Excerpt: Savoring Crystal Cove

Every day at sunset, the flag is ceremoniously hoisted at Crystal Cove.

The martini flag, that is.

The tradition dates back to the early 1930s, when the first families cruising Coast Highway in their Ford roadsters stumbled upon this former rum smugglers’ haven along the Orange County oceanfront. They staked their summertime claims with tents in the sand and surfed on simple planks of balsa wood. After the late-afternoon martini ritual, everyone gathered for nights for nights of tiki parties and luaus and bonfires on the shore.

The squatters returned to Crystal Cove year after year, from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and gradually put up thatched cottages on the bluffs—shacks with fabulous views. They cobbled together their summer homes from hunks of driftwood and leftovers scavenged from old Hollywood movie sets, thoughtfully left behind by silent-era filmmakers. “I often say that I was the luckiest girl in the world,” says Laura Davick, whose parents met here during the 1940s tent-camping era and later snapped up one of the original cottages for $2,000 in 1960. “I grew up here.”

Remarkably, Crystal Cove and its ramshackle colony have survived as a timeless paradise even as developers transformed the rest of Orange County’s villages, farms, and namesake citrus groves into mile after mile of suburban tracts, condos, and shopping centers. The drafty little cottages on the bluffs passed from generation to generation, until the Irvine Company finally sold Crystal Cove to the state of California for $32 million. The sale forced out the renters but ended up opening the cottages to everyone.

Nestled between Newport Beach and Laguna Beach, Crystal Cove is now a 2,791-acre state park that boasts a spectacular sweep of beachfront and, since summer 2006, freshly refurbished rustic cottages where you can stay overnight and soak up a perfect old California experience.

Yes, paradise has been restored and is being carefully tended by the nonprofit Crystal Cove Alliance, which Davick now runs. The cove’s cottages, though, are so popular that reservations disappear as soon they become available on the first day of every month. Even if you can’t score a cottage, Crystal Cove State Beach makes an exceptional day trip, an idyllic spot for an afternoon at the beach. And you’ll find those martinis (along with breakfast, lunch and dinner) here.

Buy Me Some Sushi and Baby Back Ribs

Now this is a great idea for a travel story: New York Times writer Peter Meehan eats his way through twelve major league baseball parks and critiques the chow. West Coast stops include Dodger Stadium (he praises the pastrami heroes, but disses the Dodger Dogs) and San Francisco’s AT&T Park (the “leading example of upscale food”).

Meehan’s taste of the Bay: “By the seventh-inning stretch, I had sampled a peppery clam chowder served in a bread bowl dotted through with tender bits of clam; a fried catfish sandwich in a crisp, Cajun-accented crust; and a homey bowl of jerk chicken over rice, with a healthy dash of jalapeño hot sauce. “

You’ll want to devour the entire story here. And then add your two cents here.

Looking for discounted baseball tickets this summer? Check out the Goldstar website.

Goodbye Travel Rut — My New Book is Here

When my husband and I plotted a monthlong trip to Europe, I spent weeks researching every detail. I amassed a bedside mountain of travel books. I quizzed friends about their adventures in the French countryside, scoured travel websites, and rented movies set in our intended destinations (I watched American Dreamer so many times I felt like a regular at Paris’ swanky Hôtel de Crillon). By the time we left, we had an adventurous, offbeat itinerary filled with cool new restaurants to try and treks to out-of-the-way corners I’d missed on previous trips abroad.

But for getaways close to home, I’ve always tended to go for the easy and familiar. Over and over. It’s just so effortless to say, let’s go to Palm Springs, which invariably means checking into the same desert resort my family always visits, with its comfortable, airy rooms and twisting water slide that keeps the kids entertained. Enjoyable, yes. But after the umpteenth trip, hardly exciting.

Then last year I was asked to write a travel book of great weekend getaways in Southern California.

Goodbye travel rut.

Suddenly I began looking at Southern California through fresh eyes. A travel writer’s eyes. Nearly every week I went someplace different: Date nights. Day trips. Weekend treks to my favorite spots and to places I’d always meant to visit, like Cold Springs Tavern near Santa Barbara.

My husband and two children often came along and they had a blast kayaking, horseback riding, swimming, snorkeling, hand-feeding emus, and roaming luscious nature spots from San Diego to the Central Coast. Other times I set out on the road (or train) alone with California writers such as Raymond Chandler, Joan Didion, Kem Nunn, Gidget, and the Steinbecks (John and son Thomas) as my guides.

I sampled my way through two wine countries, played blackjack in the afternoon, cooked alongside a great chef, savored amazing farmers’ markets and ethnic groceries all over, swam with schools of bright, teeming fish, and strapped on water-skis for the first time in years.

I recently wrote about five of my favorite SoCal road trips for the Los Angeles Times and I wanted to share these quick getaways as summer approaches. The story, and this handy Google map, offer a taste of the adventures in my new book, Great Escapes: Southern California, which is being released on Monday.

Flower power

Laura Cohen pulls out a tiny composition book and scribbles madly as we meander through Laguna Canyon Wilderness Park.

She is busily, energetically, joyfully chronicling the triumphant return of the spring wildflowers that practically disappeared from the canyon — and much of Southern California’s other parched wild spaces — in the past few years.

What a difference a few inches of gentle rain makes. This spring the hills are different. Better. Wetter. So lush that Laguna Canyon looks like someone rolled out the green carpet. The blooms seem to multiply overnight and Cohen’s flower journal grows daily with them, the park naturalist’s excitement palpable with each new speck of color bursting amid the grasslands and coastal sage scrub.

Cohen leads the way as we savor stands of willowy coast sunflowers swaying in the afternoon breeze near a couple of inviting picnic tables. Another flash of sweet yellow catches the sun and our attention: small violets called Johnny-Jump-Ups. We stop to watch a hummingbird gorge on flaming orange monkey flowers, then we roam past fuchsia-flowered gooseberry plants, white popcorn flowers, tangles of prickly wild cucumbers, and purple phacelia poking out between the rocks. Farther up along the trails, bright ruby poppies dance along Serrano Ridge. In all, Cohen catalogs more than twenty different wildflowers. Her prized discovery: delicate pink clumps of owl’s clover. “It’s very rare,” she says, “one of my favorite plants.”

Across Southern California, from coastal fields and hillsides to the desert’s sprawling wild lands, botanists and park rangers and flower lovers of all species are reveling in the best wildflower season in recent memory. It’s a great time of year to pack a picnic lunch and just wander.

I wrote about Southern California’s wildflowers for the Los Angeles Times Magazine this weekend and you can read the story here.

Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, of course, is a magical place any time of year. Other wildflower spots include the California Poppy Reserve in the Antelope Valley; Anza-Borrego Desert State Park; and Joshua Tree National Park. The wildflower season is expected to last into May.

Aquatic adventures

My friend Kate snapped this lovely photo at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. The aquarium is a great outing – plenty to do, but manageable too. Springtime fare ranges from free Shark Lagoon Nights on Fridays to boat tours of one of the word’s most active ports to whale watching expeditions (through May 31) in the waters near San Pedro Channel.

More on whale watching: Check out the Kids Off the Couch website for other whale treks along the Southern California coast. Or head to Malibu’s Point Dume, where you often can stand out along the shore and watch the California Gray Whales cruise by. No boat required.

36 hours in Pasadena

The New YorkTimes features a family-friendly weekend escape to the City of Roses. Jennifer Steinhauer stops by the Norton Simon Museum, Distant Lands Travel Bookstore and the Kidspace Children’s Museum. She wisely suggests spending an entire day at the nearby Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens, which is magical this time of year. Check out the 36-hour slide show here.

Don’t miss this: The Huntington just opened its $18 million Chinese Garden, Liu Fang Yuan, the Garden of Flowing Fragrance, this past month. Recent stories: LA Times, Wall Street Journal.