Subscribe

On my last night in Northern California, I stayed in the town of Ukiah, population 14,000. I met a man there who told me he was a retired professional rock and roll guitarist. With that introduction, Hal Wagonet shared what people have been talking about over coffee during the past […]

RD Beacon is known far and wide. When I asked my hosts for my usual request for ‘interesting local people’ with whom I could meet, this name came up and he definitely is an unusual character. RD is the laid back proprietor of RD Beacon Light Bar, perched on the […]

Cherie Soria in person is all the advertising and PR she’ll ever need. Meeting this slender, dynamic owner of four successful businesses and a mini-empire based on raw food, it’s clear that she’s been practicing and honing the science and has become an expert. She looks all of 45 and […]

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 […]