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.

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.

Welcome to my travel blog

Southern California is the heart and the home of the California Dream, and part of experiencing it lies in exploring all that we expect from it: the broad, warm beaches, the cachet of the Hollywood studios, the glitz of Rodeo Drive, the crack of bat and ball at one of the best classic ballparks in America, Dodger Stadium.

But it’s the unexpected that really makes SoCal so cool. There’s no other place like it in the world. Within two hours’ drive, just about any landscape or adventure or culture you can imagine is, quite literally, in reach—if you take a bit of time to explore.

Which is where Great Escapes: Southern California comes in.

My new book is a collection of exceptional Southern California road trips, from San Diego to the Gaviota Coast, from Catalina Island to the Mojave Desert. Weekend getaways. Nature hideaways. One-day wonders, too. You’ll find places to relax and reinvigorate your creative spirit, even if—especially if—you don’t have time to take a two-week vacation.

Great Escapes: Southern California is divided into five (somewhat arbitrary) sections: Surf, Summits, Sand, Sidewalks, and Splashes. Each section features a different set of getaways offering a broad range of experiences for different times of year, with one important common feature: All the destinations are a reasonably short distance (within two hours or so) from Los Angeles. The book skews toward wild spaces where you can escape the daily grind, even for a few hours, though there are numerous urban retreats and sanctuaries in some unexpected places.

Highlights include great California books to take on the road, as well as travel tips and first-person passages from Pico Iyer, Judith Freeman, Trina Turk, T. Jefferson Parker, Robert Smaus, D.J. Waldie, Veronique de Turenne, Val Cohen and other terrific guides who graciously shared their expertise.

My book is being released in May by Countryman Press/Norton Publishing and already is available for pre-orders online. I’m launching this blog as an online companion where I can post travel news and tidbits, upcoming events, occasional excerpts and a SoCal Road Trip calendar for 2008.

Thanks for dropping by. And stay tuned.