10 Picturesque Small Towns in California for a Weekend Retreat
Avalon is the only town on Catalina Island, an hour by ferry from the mainland, and private cars require a permit with a multi-year waiting list. Carmel-by-the-Sea has no residential mail delivery and no street numbers; houses are identified by name and cross-street. Solvang was founded in 1911 by Danish-American Lutheran ministers from the Midwest as a folk school and farming colony. Healdsburg sits at the convergence of three Sonoma wine appellations with several Michelin-starred restaurants on the Plaza. The ten California small towns below make the weekend worth the drive.
Avalon
Avalon is the only incorporated town on Catalina Island and runs on tourism, dive trips, and the daily ferry traffic from the mainland. The Catalina Express ferry from Long Beach takes about an hour. Once on the island, visitors get around on foot, by bike, or by golf cart; private cars require a permit and a multi-year waiting list. Crescent Avenue (called Front Street locally) is the spine of the harbor, with shops, the Wrigley Memorial Fountain, and the Serpentine Wall built into the seafront.
The Catalina Casino, built by William Wrigley Jr. in 1929, was never used for gambling; the term "casino" here is the original Italian sense of a meeting and entertainment hall. The building still hosts the Avalon Theatre (the first commercial theater in the world built specifically for talking pictures) and the Catalina Ballroom upstairs. The Catalina Island Company runs glass-bottom boat tours and a small undersea-submarine expedition out of the harbor. The Catalina Island Museum sits across the bay in a 2016 building dedicated to the island's archaeology, William Wrigley's tenure, and the working bison herd that has roamed the interior since 1924.
Healdsburg
Healdsburg sits at the convergence of three Sonoma County wine appellations: Russian River Valley, Dry Creek Valley, and Alexander Valley. The town's population is around 11,000, and the central Plaza is the working downtown with tasting rooms, restaurants, and shops. SingleThread, a three-Michelin-star restaurant and inn, is one of the more visible operations in town. Barndiva is the longer-running farm-to-table option. Many wineries are within a ten-minute drive: Jordan, Williamson, Ridge, and Quivira among dozens of others. The Healdsburg Jazz Festival runs ten days each June. The Russian River runs immediately west of the town, with public swimming and paddling access from Memorial Beach.
Carmel-by-the-Sea
Carmel-by-the-Sea is a one-square-mile village on the Monterey Peninsula, immediately south of Pebble Beach. The town has no residential mail delivery and no street numbers (residents pick up mail at the post office, and houses are identified by name and cross-street). Many of the houses are designed with deliberate architectural eccentricity, and the small downtown grid is laid out around hidden courtyards and passageways.
The Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo (the Carmel Mission), founded in 1771, is the burial site of JunÃpero Serra and one of the more architecturally intact of the California missions. Carmel Beach runs a wide white-sand crescent at the foot of Ocean Avenue, the village's main street. Restaurants downtown include La Balena and Pangea Grill. Clint Eastwood served as mayor of Carmel from 1986 to 1988 and still owns the Mission Ranch hotel and restaurant on the village's southern edge.
Los Alamos
Los Alamos is a small Santa Barbara County town on Highway 101, originally a Pacific Coast Railway agricultural shipping point and reinvented in the last fifteen years as a wine destination. The downtown is a single working block of Bell Street, with tasting rooms (Casa Dumetz, Bedford Winery, Lo-Fi Wines), a few restaurants (Pico, Bell's, Plenty on Bell), and the 1880s Union Hotel still operating as an inn. Several actor- and musician-owned tasting rooms have opened on Bell Street in recent years, drawing weekend traffic up from Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. The Sta. Rita Hills AVA, just to the west, is one of the more critically respected Pinot Noir regions in California.
Solvang
Solvang was founded in 1911 by a group of Danish-American Lutheran ministers and educators from the Midwest, who bought 9,000 acres of the former Mexican Rancho San Carlos de Jonata to establish a Danish folk school and farming colony. The town leaned more heavily into the Danish theme starting in the 1940s, but the underlying community is genuine, and the windmills, half-timbered storefronts, and bakeries (Olsen's Danish Village Bakery, Mortensen's) reflect actual heritage. The Elverhøj Museum of History & Art covers the founding and the architecture in detail. The Solvang Vintage Motorcycle Museum holds a substantial private collection from the early to mid-20th century. The town's Julefest, a six-week Danish Christmas program, runs from late November through New Year's.
Bishop
Bishop is the largest town in the Owens Valley on US 395, sandwiched between the Sierra Nevada to the west and the White Mountains to the east. The town is a major basecamp for High Sierra trail access, climbing in the Buttermilks (one of the most internationally recognized bouldering areas in the country), and Eastern Sierra fly fishing. The Laws Railroad Museum, four miles north of town, covers eleven acres preserving the narrow-gauge Carson and Colorado Railway depot, with a working rolling stock collection and an 1883 station building. The Mountain Light Gallery downtown displays the work of the late Galen Rowell, a Bishop-based mountaineering photographer. Erick Schat's Bakkery on Main Street has been the local sheepherder bread source since 1938.
Three Rivers
Three Rivers is the gateway town to Sequoia National Park, named for the convergence of the Middle, Marble, and South Forks of the Kaweah River. The town strings out along Highway 198 below the park entrance, with cabins, vacation rentals, and a small commercial cluster. The Slick Rock Recreation Area on the Kaweah is the local swimming hole. The Kaweah Post Office, in a one-room wooden building south of town, was historically connected to a small utopian socialist colony in the 1880s and is one of the smaller post offices still operating in California. The Gateway Restaurant and Lodge sits over the river. Sequoia is the headline draw, with the General Sherman Tree (the largest single-stem tree on Earth by volume) about an hour's drive up the steep, switchbacked park road.
Cambria
Cambria sits halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles on Highway 1, at the edge of the Big Sur coast. Moonstone Beach Drive runs along the bluff above Moonstone Beach, where the moonstone agate the beach is named for still washes up regularly. The town's two-block downtown has art galleries, antique shops, and a Friday farmers' market. Hearst Castle, six miles north at San Simeon, is the William Randolph Hearst estate (now a state historical monument) with daily guided tours. The Cambria Historical Museum, in an 1870s ranch house, runs local history exhibits. Stolo Family Vineyards, on the inland side of town, runs tastings on weekend afternoons.
Idyllwild
Idyllwild is a mountain town in the San Jacinto Mountains east of Los Angeles, at about 5,400 feet elevation. The proximity to Tahquitz Peak and Lily Rock (the angular granite formations visible from town) made Idyllwild one of the early proving grounds for American technical rock climbing in the 1930s and 1940s, and the Idyllwild Arts Academy on the south side of town is one of the more selective high-school arts programs in the country. The Idyllwild Nature Center, off Highway 243, has a small museum with Native American (Cahuilla) cultural exhibits and trails into the surrounding pine forest. The downtown is a two-block strip of restaurants, galleries, and shops; the Idyllwild Bunkhouse, the Strawberry Creek Inn, and the Quiet Creek Inn handle most of the lodging.
Sausalito
Sausalito sits across the Golden Gate from San Francisco at the south end of Marin County. The town began as a deepwater shipping port and a World War II Liberty ship construction site (Marinship at Sausalito built 93 ships in three and a half years). After the war, the houseboat community at Waldo Point Harbor grew up around the surplus naval housing and continues today as one of the more unusual residential neighborhoods in the country. Downtown Bridgeway Avenue runs along the waterfront with restaurants and small shops. The Bay Model Visitor Center, in a former Marinship warehouse, houses a 1.5-acre working hydraulic model of San Francisco Bay built by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1957. The 0.4-mile climb up to Battery Spencer, in the Marin Headlands, gives one of the most photographed views of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The ten weekend trips above are not interchangeable. A Carmel weekend is built around walks on the white sand beach and dinner in a hidden courtyard. A Bishop weekend is built around granite climbing and a 4 a.m. trailhead. A Healdsburg weekend is built around a Plaza tasting room and dinner at SingleThread. Pick the one that fits the actual weekend; the rest will still be there.
