The 9 Can't-Miss Towns In Southern California
Within a few hours of Los Angeles and San Diego are beach towns, an offshore island, pine-forest mountains, and open desert. Each kind of country has a small town that is the easiest way to see it, and these nine link into one loop around the region. It begins in a Danish-style village in the Santa Ynez Valley wine country, lit for the holidays by Thanksgiving weekend.
Solvang
Julefest, the holiday festival in the Danish-style village of Solvang, opens on November 27 and stays on until January 3. Every evening in Solvang Park, a 10-minute light and music show starts on the hour, and children can spend a visit searching the village for Nisser, the elves hidden around town for a citywide scavenger hunt. The tree lighting is on December 4, with the parade the next day.
Solvang is also a base for the wine country of the Santa Ynez Valley, with more than 20 tasting rooms in town. McClain Cellars has a patio with fire pits, and Dascomb Cellars and Crawford Family Wines are among the others. Between tastings, the kringles at Birkholm's Bakery & Cafe are filled with almond paste, and Olsen's Danish Village Bakery is known for its classic Danish pastries. During Julefest, the narrated Solvang Trolley runs a Christmas light tour after dark.
Carpinteria
South of Santa Barbara on the coast, Carpinteria's palm-lined main street, Linden Avenue, ends at Carpinteria City Beach, and the sand continues into Carpinteria State Beach, a mile of shoreline used for swimming, surf fishing, tide pooling, and camping. Robitaille's, an old-fashioned candy store, is in town, and so is Esau's Cafe.
In winter, the walk to make is east along the Carpinteria Coastal Vista Trail, about 1.3 mostly flat miles, to the bluff above the harbor seal rookery. According to the city, the place to park for the trail is 499 Linden Avenue. The beach below, about 750 feet on either side of Casitas Pier, closes on December 1 and stays closed until the end of May while the seals have their pups, and entering the closed area can bring fines of up to $10,000. The seals can be watched quietly from the top of the bluff, and fewer than 100 are on the sand on most days.
Ojai
Inland in Ventura County, about 45 minutes from Santa Barbara on two-lane Highway 150, the event to plan a visit to Ojai around is the pink moment, the rosy glow that spreads across the Topa Topa Mountains at sunset on some evenings. Meditation Mount, a 32-acre garden on Reeves Road, is one of the places to watch it. The sanctuary stays open until sunset on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, visits are by pre-registration, and a donation is requested.
Earlier in the day, downtown Ojai has Bart's Books, an independent bookstore with its shelves outdoors, and Libbey Park in the middle of town. On Sundays, the Ojai Certified Farmers Market is held on Matilija Street, rain or shine, and for a longer outing, the Ojai Valley Trail is a paved path of about 9 miles along the Ventura River for walking and biking.
Avalon
A ferry ride from Long Beach, San Pedro, or Dana Point, which can take as little as an hour, ends in Avalon on Catalina Island, where the Catalina Casino is the first building to see. With a general admission ticket, visitors can walk through it at their own pace, including the restored Avalon Theatre and the Wrigley Ballroom, and a narrated VIP Backstage Tour takes a group through with a guide. The ballroom is also where Catalina's New Year's Eve Gala is held every December 31.
Green Pleasure Pier is the departure point for the Glass Bottom Boat and the Undersea Sub Expedition, and Descanso Beach has kayak, paddleboard, and snorkel rentals in season. Golf carts can be rented for getting around Avalon, and one is enough to reach the Wrigley Memorial & Botanic Garden, 1.5 miles up Avalon Canyon Road.
Del Mar
Carpinteria's seal walk stays on top of the bluff, and at Del Mar, in northern San Diego County, the long walk is down on the sand. At all but the highest tides, the beach can be followed south all the way to the 2,000-acre Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve, where trails climb among the rare Torrey pines, and dolphins are frequently spotted just past the waves. The main beach has good swimming and intermediate surf, with easy access at every block, and at its north end, the river mouth is a broad wedge of sand where dogs gather and volleyball games start up.
Above the beach, Powerhouse Park and Seagrove Park are the spots for a picnic, and Del Mar Plaza has shops and restaurants with ocean views. Thoroughbreds are back at the Del Mar racetrack for the fall meet, the Bing Crosby Season, which opened on November 6.
Julian
Pie is the reason to drive up to Julian, a mountain town about 60 miles east of downtown San Diego. At Mom's Pie House on Main Street, the bakers can be watched through the window, and pie comes whole or by the slice, while the menu at Julian Pie Company includes Dutch crumb-top apple, boysenberry-apple crumb, strawberry-apple, and apple-rhubarb. Apple Alley Bakery, also on Main Street, has strudels and cinnamon rolls along with its pies. Julian Station, on Highway 78, has hard cider, wine, and chocolate tastings, and the main trail up Volcan Mountain, about 5 miles round trip, is open to hikers and bikers. Guided tours also go underground at the Eagle and High Peak Mine on C Street, where partway through, the guide switches off the lights for a moment of total darkness.
Borrego Springs
East of Julian, down on the desert floor, Borrego Springs is surrounded by Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, and mornings are the time to see the park. Its visitor center is open daily through May, with a fossil display and a bighorn sheep exhibit, and the Borrego Palm Canyon Trail climbs 1.5 miles to a viewpoint over the palm grove, which is closed while it recovers from a fire. The park puts the 3-mile round trip, with about 700 feet of climbing, at a minimum of two hours.
Around town, roughly 130 metal sculptures by Ricardo Breceda stand in the open desert, and most of them can be reached in a two-wheel-drive car with a free map from the Desert Nature Center. Late in the day, Font's Point is an overlook above the Borrego Badlands, but the sandy wash out to it is hard going in places even with four-wheel drive, so the park's road-conditions report is worth checking before setting out.
After dark, the plan in Borrego Springs is stargazing. The town is California's first certified International Dark Sky Community, and according to the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association, the view of the night sky here is one that 22 million people cannot see.
Idyllwild
Highways 243 and 74, the mountain roads into Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Mountains, can have chain controls and occasional closures after winter snow. Once in town, the trail to take is the Ernie Maxwell Scenic Trail, which starts at Humber Park, a steep two miles east of the village under the granite face of Lily Rock, also known as Tahquitz Rock. The trail is 5.2 miles round trip with 675 feet of rolling elevation change, and the village is visible below it along the way.
Back in the village, Restaurant Gastrognome has a deck facing the town square, Cafe Aroma and the Red Kettle are other places to eat, and Bonnie's Books & Treasures is among the shops. The trails at the Idyllwild Nature Center are open every day during daylight hours. Idyllwild also has an unofficial canine mayor, Mayor Max III, and visitors can get a certificate naming them one of his deputy mayors.
Big Bear Lake
In winter, bald eagles are one of the reasons to make the drive up to Big Bear Lake, the last stop on the loop, in the San Bernardino Mountains. The Big Bear Discovery Center, on North Shore Drive in Fawnskin, is one of the best places to learn about them. Along the same north shore, the paved Alpine Pedal Path follows the water for 5.2 miles, and Castle Rock is a short, steep hike of just over a mile each way with about 800 feet of climbing.
In the Village, the holiday tree lighting is on November 27, and Santa Paws visits the Big Bear Alpine Zoo, a wildlife rehabilitation zoo, on December 12 and 19. The earliest possible opening day posted for Snow Summit and Bear Mountain, the ski areas of Big Bear Mountain Resort, is November 21, with the official date still to be announced.
Part of what makes these nine towns work as one trip is how close the regions sit to one another. Solvang's bakeries and the seal bluff at Carpinteria are both in Santa Barbara County, and Avalon is as little as an hour by ferry off the coast at Long Beach. In San Diego County, Julian's pie shops are about 60 miles from downtown, and Borrego Springs, down on the desert floor to the east, has a night sky that most of Southern California never sees from home. The planning mostly comes down to ferry times for Catalina and road conditions in the mountains and the desert, and in return, apple pie, mountain trails, and dark skies are only a few hours from the beach.
