What a long and twisty road separates this beautiful place from the rest of the world. Maybe that’s why just 1100 people have chosen to live in the artist’s colony of Mendocino.  That plus the fact that you can’t have double pane windows, skylights or even solar panels. It’s all […]

I bought coffee in the small town of Boonville, on the Northern California coast.  A friendly guy asked me where  I was going as he passed me some milk. “Fort Bragg,” I told him. “Is it really another hour?” I had been driving since 10:30, and it was just past […]

For centuries, the Miwok Indians in Northern California used a series of holes in a giant black rock to grind acorns.  Right near the 50-foot long slab of rock stands two towering Valley Oak Trees, the source of the hundreds of thousands of acorns which would be ground up, rinsed […]

Last night I joined my German travel writer brethren and met with the sales manager of the local Hyatt. She piled up plate after plate of choice items from their menu, and my six fellow writers were glad that her boss speaks German and chatted them up. German readers love […]

I can’t think of a better way to see a city than from the seat of a bike.  I was met at my hotel by Nick Leoni, an enthusiastic member of the tourism board team here who immediately began talking about where we shouldeat, hey, we gotta get fueled up […]

More than one person here told me this week that it was 1848, not the more well-known 1849 that a gold discovery brought hundreds of thousands of men to this part of the world.  It was 98% men and just two percent women. In Sacramento we toured Fort Sutter, where […]

Sacramento is one of the most leafy cities I’ve ever visited. I was told that only Paris has more trees than this Sycamore bedecked city.  Street after street had huge Elm or Sycamores running their length, providing a green cover from the sun.  It is on one of these shady […]

We dined last night at Arnold’s favorite Italian joint, in an airy former garden center a few blocks from Sacramento’s Capital Dome.  There is even a photo on the wall of the governor, proclaiming Luccas as his own personal place when he’s in town, doing his governing thing. A man […]

Want to know a word that will haunt us in the next twenty years? Pensions.  Many don’t realize that public sector workers, from teachers, to firefighters to cops, have been promised far more in pensions than the rest of us, and now it’s bankrupting us. Mort Zuckerman wrote a piece […]

I haven’t been this ready for a trip in a long time. Usually the dates just push up against me;  all of a sudden it’s the night before and I freeze thinking about all of the stuff I’m supposed to get done. But with a slimmer travel schedule so far […]

Most people will admit that they are shy. Up to 95% of people admit to being shy in some situations. “Shyness is people walking around as if they are in front of a mirror all of the time,” explained Shyness Researcher Bernardo Carducci, in an article in today’s WSJ. The story […]