Eric lives in Shell Beach, near San Luis Obispo, and shared some of his favorite local haunts with me.

DW: You roamed beaches from the Oregon border to Baja Mexico. How do the Central Coast beaches stack up?
ES: The Central coast is unique and beautiful. There are plenty of surf spots, but it’s the whole experience that makes me love our little gem.

DW: What’s your favorite local beach?
ES: Old Shell Beach is my favorite. My aunt owned the Shell Beach Café for over 20 years and the whole family grew up working there. It’s now Zorro’s Café. I live down the street and wander on my bike to surf. There’s a great community, especially the old guys at the dog park. My favorite spots are just north of my home. Get as close to the beach as you can and glance around at the reefs, find a nook and enjoy.

DW: What's the best spot for kayaking?
ES: Kayaking is fabulous around Dinosaur Park [an 11-acre oceanfront park along Shell Beach Road in Pismo Beach] just south of my house. The caves, cliffscapes and wildlife are very inspiring.

DW: What are your favorite breakfast places?
ES: My favorite spot is Zorro’s. Also, Seaside Cafe is where I start my day with a great cup of illy coffee. Epic pastries. Try the Eggs Benedict.

DW: What spot is a must-visit locale for first-time visitors to the SLO Coast?
ES: Wander the San Luis Creek [in downtown San Luis Obispo] on Farmer’s Market Thursday from 7-9 p.m. Stroll through the Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa and have a glass of wine at Novo.

I interviewed Eric while working on Santa Barbara and California's Central Coast. You can read more about his work here.

Want to know more about Shell Beach? Check out this story I wrote for the Los Angeles Times about a long-weekend getaway to the San Luis Obispo County coast.

Countryman Press publishes my new travel book this month and copies already are available at many bookstores, including Chaucer’s Books in Santa Barbara, and online retailers such as Skylight Books in Los Angeles, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.

To celebrate, I’m giving away three autographed copies this month, just in time for Valentines Day. Would you like one? Just send a message (to PaperTigersInk AT Gmail.com) and put “Santa Barbara and the Central Coast” in the subject line. Or send your message via Twitter. The entry deadline is Jan. 28, 2011.

In the coming weeks I’ll be posting book excerpts, travel items, and photos. I’d also like to invite readers to share their favorite Central Coast spots, too.

Thanks, as always, for stopping by SoCal So Cool. And Happy New Year to all!

1//30/11 Update: Congratulations to El Segundo librarian Ellen Cunningham, Daren Davey and Norman Yiskis, the book giveaway winners. Enjoy!

This is California unplugged and remarkably unspoiled.

It’s also the setting of my newest book, Santa Barbara and California’s Central Coast, an Explorer’s Guide (Countryman Press, January 2011).

Tidepools in Shell Beach

and Los Angeles to the south, the Central Coast straddles more than 200 miles along the

western edge of the continent. It’s a world of farmers, foodies, cowboys, surfers, and

urban refugees — one of my favorite places to roam. The choice of destinations is endless

– El Capitan, Shell Beach, Paso Robles, the Santa Ynez Valley, Morro Bay, and Big Sur, just to name a few idyllic spots. Getting there is a big part of the thrill.

Take the car: The drive along Highway 1, the westernmost thoroughfare in the continental United States, overlooks the rocky coastal cliffs and broad flat beaches, and in the Big Sur region the hairpins and switchbacks offer unforgettable vistas.

Better still, take the train: The oceanfront journey between Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo is mesmerizing, offering vantage points you simply can’t see when traveling by car. I like to grab a window seat on the ocean side of the train, crank up my iPod, and sit back in comfy seats as Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner zips along the coast. The ride offers mile after mile of breaking waves and ventures deep into the wild lands of Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Santa Ynez Valley

Swaths of California’s coastline, from the Santa Barbara area to the wilds of the Big Sur Coast, remain largely pristine and undeveloped. That means that you’ll find an endless expanse of wild spaces and wide-open beaches to explore as you cruise California’s middle ground. It’s a beautiful place to hike, swim, surf, kayak, or camp out right along the shore. The region also is a hot spot for wine lovers. In the past decade the wineries of the Santa Ynez Valley and neighboring San Luis Obispo County, particularly in Paso Robles, have expanded to rival the quality of California’s famous grape producers up north in Napa and Sonoma.

Perhaps the best part is that the Central Coast is so vast and so varied that you can return again and again, as I do, and still discover something new, surprising, and delightful with each visit.

Good news: The Wonder Years: Portraits of Athletes Who Never Slow Down is now out in bookstores.

The book, which I co-authored with photographer Rick Rickman, is a collection of portraits and stories from an extraordinary cast of senior athletes and former Olympians. You can meet some of them in this cool photo gallery featured at USA Today.

“Perhaps no one knows the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat better than athletes in their later years who are still at their game,” writes Carol Kaufmann at AARP Bulletin. “The aches and pains may be greater but so is the victory at the finish line. In their new book, The Wonder Years, photographer Rick Rickman and writer Donna Wares capture the spirit of the athletes, who are living proof that getting older doesn’t mean slowing down.”

Published this summer by Chronicle Books, The Wonder Years includes 100 color portraits by Rick, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer. Figure skating legend Peggy Fleming contributed the foreword.

For the past two decades, Rick has traveled the country photographing aging adventurers and amateur athletes who defy the conventional wisdom about what it means to grow old. They are part of a growing senior underground of 350,000 men and women competing at the local and state level to get into the National Senior Games. The games arrived on the West Coast Aug. 1 on the Stanford University campus. It’s world’s largest gathering of athletes over 50.

The photo accompanying this post comes from Kepler’s, an independent bookstore in nearby Menlo Park. As you can see, Kepler’s has a special August display of books geared toward the 10,000 athletes now participating in the Senior Games.

Rick, of course, is in the middle of the action at Stanford. He is shooting the games again this year with his photography students from Brooks Institute in Ventura. Check out their work here.

On Thursday Aug. 6, Rick will be discussing The Wonder Years from noon to 1 p.m. on the Euflexxa Entertainment Stage on campus (in the NSG village).

On August 27, Rick and I will be attending opening night of the Aquadettes’ annual Aqua Follies in Orange County. The Aquadettes are featured the book and will be joining us to autograph copies of The Wonder Years at the show. [Thanks to Borders in Mission Viejo for supplying books for this special event.]

On Sept. 24, Rick and I will discuss The Wonder Years at 7 p.m. at the Barnes and Noble Marina Pacifica in Long Beach.

Popular culture sometimes suggests there is little to look forward to in our later years, but popular culture is wrong. The men and women featured in this book — and the thousands of athletes participating in this summer’s National Games — have a different message, one of grace and style, a path to the wonder years. They are showing the rest of us the way.

P.S. Keep up with the latest news about The Wonder Years at twitter.com/wonderyearsbook.

Here’s a link to the story I wrote for Sunday’s LA Times Travel Section, which also ran this photo gallery and handy info guide, too.

This summer I’ll be spending more time in Central California working on my travel book, and I’m also looking forward to the release of The Wonder Years: Portraits of Athletes Who Never Slow Down, which is being published by Chronicle Books.

The Wonder Years is a collection of stories by me and photographs by Rick Rickman, who has been the official photographer for the National Senior Games for years. The Senior Games arrive on the West Coast for this first time Aug. 1-15 and will be held at Stanford University.

Chris shares a mile-by-mile account and ultimately finds his 1,136-mile trek a “sweet trip,” despite some rocky patches. His travelogue is an ode to off-season travel: bare beaches, thinner traffic, empty lodgings and the characters he met along the way. He writes:

To consume the California coast in a single gulp, never mind the off-season, never mind the off-year — is more than a meal. It’s a revelation, a rediscovery, a marathon. Or maybe I should just rely on the words of Mike, the 40-year-old Coloradan I found on Day 4 north of Santa Barbara, sitting on a driftwood log in his boxers, still soaked from a spontaneous leap into the Pacific.

“This is as good as it gets,” he said. “For two minutes, you don’t feel old and fat anymore.”

You’ll want to read the entire piece here.

Photo above: Along the Big Sur Coast

Starting Friday, the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach hosts “Holiday Late Nights.” From Dec. 26 to Jan. 2, admission drops to $10 after 5 p.m., and the aquarium is open until 9 p.m.

The annual migration of Pacific gray whales from Alaska to Mexico officially begins Friday, too. Working with the aquarium, Harbor Breeze Cruises includes naturalists on excursions that take you up close to whales, dolphins and other sea life. Press Telegram.

Updated: What are you doing New Year’s Eve?

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

“It was three days before the New Year in late 2006, and I was eating a burger with the traveler and writer Paul Theroux on Oahu’s North Shore. Beside us in the rickety little shack was a quintessentially Hawaiian group of Chinese Americans, African Americans, semi–Southeast Asians and kids who could have been any or all of the above, waiting for the dad in the group to bring over their avocado burgers from the counter. It took Paul and me a few seconds to realize that the dad in question — who looked like a skinny teenager — was, in fact, the freshman Senator from Illinois, who was expected to enter the presidential race in the next week or two…”

At Sunset Magazine’s travel blog, editor Amy Wolf wonders: What burger shack was it that happened to be serving Pico Iyer, Paul Theroux, and Barack Obama at the very same time? And how good were the burgers?

When we found out that The Malibu Beach Inn was running the world’s first iPhone guest management system, Hotel Evolution, naturally we had to go and try it out.

Despite the hotel’s website telling us that rooms were a steep $385 a night (on a Tuesday in a recession), we actually found a rate of $258 within the site. We clicked on one of their promotions which was offering a room and dinner for select days only. Our day happened to be a select day.

So a few hours later we were checking into the Malibu Beach Inn on PCH…

Keep reading here.

David Geffen opened his refurbished Malibu Beach Inn last fall, promising the “true Malibu experience” and allowing only registered guests to dine in his hotel restaurant. Since then, room rates aren’t the only thing that have dropped: I received a recent promo email announcing that the Malibu Beach Inn welcomes reservations for Thanksgiving dinner. A follow up call revealed that the hotel restaurant is now open to visitors the rest of the year, too, — with or without a room reservation.

*Updated: The New York Times does a round up on hotels offering the latest tech tools: “Hotels are under such pressure to keep up with their gadget-obsessed guests that they are working with technology companies to regain their edge.” Read more here.