TALES

Three state parks where the crowds thin and the magic remains

After fifty years of driving Highway 1 through Big Sur, I’ve learned a simple truth: the places with the biggest crowds are not always the places with the biggest rewards.

That’s fortunate, because Big Sur is having a moment. After three years of repair and reconstruction following a pair of landslides, Highway 1 in Big Sur is fully open. Drivers are returning in record numbers. Northbound traffic past Ragged Point, the southern gateway to Big Sur, has risen an astonishing 900 percent year-over-year.

Which raises an obvious question: Where do you go when everyone else seems to be going in the same place?

I love Highway 1, too—and driven it: ever-so-slowly in a V.W. camper, way-too-quickly in a modified BMW, at a good-parent-pace in an SUV loaded with kids, coolers, and camping gear. Over the years I’ve discovered that some of Big Sur’s best experiences lie just beyond the traffic jams, crowded pullouts, and Instagram hotspots.

When visitors ask me where to find the Big Sur that first captured my imagination, these are the three state parks I recommend:

• Garrapata offers Big Sur in its purest form: a rugged ridge, a redwood canyon, and some of the finest coastal views anywhere.
• Andrew Molera is the complete Big Sur experience—river, meadow, beach, bluffs, redwoods, and mountains all stitched together in a single hike.
• And Limekiln tells one of my favorite Big Sur stories, where industry nearly destroyed a canyon and nature slowly reclaimed it.

So yes, expect traffic. Expect crowded viewpoints. And if you’re determined to get that classic Bixby Bridge photo, expect company.

But if you’d rather experience Big Sur than simply photograph it, and take the path less traveled, start with these three parks.

Andrew Molera State Park

Mountains, meadows, and the mouth of the Big Sur River are highlights of Andrew Molera State Park, the largest state park on the Big Sur coast. More than 20 miles of trail weave through the park’s 4,500 acres, offering hikers a remarkable variety of landscapes and experiences.

If some Big Sur parks feel like dramatic overlooks connected by trails, Andrew Molera feels like a landscape meant to be wandered. It is broader, wilder, and more open than many of its neighbors. Here the Santa Lucia Mountains don’t simply plunge into the sea; they unfold gradually through meadows, river corridors, oak woodlands, redwood groves, and marine terraces before finally arriving at the Pacific.

For many visitors, the park means a quick stroll to Molera Beach and the broad lagoon where the Big Sur River meets the ocean. My favorite route (a 9-mile loop) circles the park’s western side. It begins with a small adventure—crossing the Big Sur River. Depending on the season, that crossing may be a casual splash through ankle-deep water or a refreshing reminder that hiking sometimes involves getting your feet wet. Consider it an initiation.

Beyond the river lies a constantly changing landscape. Creamery Meadow glows green in winter and spring. Wildflowers color the hillsides—California poppies, lupine, paintbrush, and mustard among them. Deer graze the grasslands. Red-tailed hawks patrol overhead. Turkey vultures drift effortlessly on coastal thermals.

Then come the bluffs.

Hidden beaches lie far below. Sea otters float in kelp beds offshore. During migration seasons, gray whales and humpbacks may be visible beyond the breakers. Every bend reveals another postcard view—rocky coves, crashing surf, and ridges fading southward into the blue haze of Big Sur.

The climb up Panorama Trail and Pfeiffer Ridge provides the hike’s grand finale. Suddenly you’re high above the coast, looking both north and south across one of California’s most celebrated landscapes. The views are immense, but what makes this hike memorable is the variety. River, meadow, woodland, redwoods, bluffs, beach, and mountain—all in a single day.

Garrapata State Park

Garrapata is Big Sur stripped down to its essence. No lodge, no campgrounds, no gift shop peddling logo mugs—just a rugged slice of coastline, a redwood canyon, and a trail that dares you to climb high, look far, and breathe deep. For many travelers barreling down Highway 1, Garrapata is the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stretch of wild coast where the Pacific hammers sheer cliffs and fog drifts up canyon walls. For those who stop and lace up hiking boots, it’s a revelation.

The park takes its name from the Spanish word for “tick,” but don’t let that scare you off (though, yes, check your socks). The real story of Garrapata is written in its landscapes: surf exploding against Soberanes Point, grassy ridges speckled with lupine and yarrow, deep redwood forest hushed by ferns and shaded by ancient trunks. In a compact parcel of 2,900 acres, you get a sampler platter of Big Sur at its rawest.

The 7-mile hike through Garrapata is a tale of two worlds. Rocky Ridge Trail doesn’t believe in easing you in; it charges uphill almost immediately, switchbacks be damned. The reward? Views that open like stage curtains: Soberanes Point and the restless Pacific below, the forested canyon behind, and, on a clear day, the serrated crest of the Santa Lucias marching inland. If you’re hiking in spring, the slopes are alive with wildflowers—bush lupine, sticky monkeyflower, golden yarrow—and alive with hikers pausing for breath.

Once you’ve tested your legs on the ridge, the descent delivers you into an entirely different mood. Soberanes Canyon is the antidote to the ridge’s exposure, a cool, shady redwood grove where a creek trickles under ferns, blackberry tangles across the path, and Douglas iris dots the understory. It feels enclosed, safe, timeless—the sort of place where you half expect a hermit’s cabin or a deer stepping silently across the trail. For many families, the canyon alone is enough—a short out-and-back under the redwoods.

But for those who take on the full loop, Garrapata is a study in contrasts. Cliffs and canyons, dry ridges and damp groves, history etched into the land and raw nature overwhelming it all. It may not be the most famous of Big Sur’s state parks, but Garrapata holds its own kind of majesty. Stop the car, shoulder the pack, and see what you’ve been missing.

Limekiln State Park

In the 1870s, entrepreneurs looked at this lovely coastal canyon and saw not beauty but… building materials.

They quarried the limestone cliffs, chopped down the surrounding redwoods, and stuffed the trees into giant wood-fired kilns to make lime for cement. Entire groves of majestic redwoods—gone up in smoke, literally, to build sidewalks and basements in Monterey and San Francisco. It’s enough to make you wish the conservation movement had shown up fifty years earlier with a few clipboards and petitions.

The operation was short-lived, but not before the canyon took a beating. Then nature, patient as ever, went about the long, slow work of healing. Fast-forward 150 years: today the kilns remain like ghostly chimneys, half-swallowed by forest, and the canyon is once again cool, green, and redwood-shaded. Some of these redwoods, the southernmost in Monterey County, are downright magnificent—healthy, enormous, and maybe, just maybe, a distinct subspecies adapted to these steep coastal canyons.

It almost didn’t turn out this way. In 1984, a private landowner wanted to log the canyon again. Conservationists, the Big Sur Land Trust, and a chorus of locals fought back and saved the place. By 1995, Limekiln State Park was born. The campground is rustic, even funky, with its own Big Sur charm. Showers and clean restrooms, helpful camp hosts, and a sandy beach where Limekiln Creek meets the Pacific—all the ingredients for a mellow stay.

Walk the trail for a mile or so and you’ll hear the creek tumbling over pools, pass through cathedral groves of redwoods, and arrive at the kilns—four towering, moss-coated cylinders where stone met fire, where industry and wilderness clashed, and where, happily, wilderness is now winning.

Yosemite gets the crowds. Joshua Tree gets the Instagrammers. Lassen gets overlooked.

Well, maybe not for long. Visitor numbers are climbing as hikers search for alternatives to California’s crowded marquee parks.

Drive into this corner of northern California and you’ll discover that Lassen is certainly no consolation prize for hikers. The climbs are real (ask anyone who’s huffed and puffed up Brokeoff Mountain or Lassen Peak), the geothermal features are spectacular (yes, Bumpass Hell really does smell like rotten eggs), and the lakes — from Shadow to Manzanita — are as sweet as any in the Sierra.

Tucked away where the Cascade Range nudges up against the northern reaches of the Sierra Nevada, the park blends the spirit of both mountain ranges. Its forests are filled with lodgepole and ponderosa pines, red fir, and even a few Sierra-style hemlocks. Its meadows host the bright blooms of mule’s ears and lupine, while its higher slopes feel closer in kinship to Shasta and Rainier than to Yosemite. Hikers who lace up their boots here discover a landscape that feels both familiar and otherworldly: a meeting ground of lava, lakes, and alpine light.

Lassen’s claim to volcanic fame is undeniable. The park preserves every type of volcano found on Earth—shield, plug dome, cinder cone, and stratovolcano—all within its 166 square miles. Hydrothermal features—bubbling mudpots, hissing fumaroles, steaming vents—offer a living laboratory of fire and water. The earth feels thin here, fragile, as if you are walking just above its beating heart.

The park is a patchwork of contrasts. To the south, the “mini-Yellowstone” of Bumpass Hell and its companion thermal basins roar and bubble, reached by short trails and interpreted with care by the park service. Here, boardwalks wind past turquoise pools and steaming mudpots, the air perfumed with sulfur, the ground hissing with volcanic energy. Families and casual hikers can experience the volcanic heart of Lassen in just a few miles.

To the east, the mood softens. A chain of lakes—Butte, Snag, Horseshoe, Juniper—invites backpackers and anglers into quieter realms. The Pacific Crest Trail threads 17 miles through this country, offering long views and deep solitude. For those who prefer reflection to roar, these waters and woods provide the park’s gentlest enchantments

Lassen also has stories. Lassen Peak blew its top in 1914, kept at it until 1921, and in the process earned the distinction of being the only national park created because of an eruption. It’s the story of Peter Lassen, an unreliable Danish trail guide who misled emigrants so badly they once forced him at gunpoint to climb his namesake mountain to get them back on track.

Believe me: once you’ve climbed Lassen Peak, soaked up the view from Brokeoff, wandered past steaming vents at Bumpass Hell, or stood on the rim of Cinder Cone staring down at the Fantastic Lava Beds, you’ll wonder why this place isn’t mobbed. And then you’ll be grateful it isn’t.

Cinder Cone & Fantastic Lava Beds

If you were asked to draw a volcano in grade school, chances are you’d sketch something that looks like Lassen’s Cinder Cone—a near-perfect pyramid of black scoria and ash, isolated in a landscape of lava and painted earth. To hike here is to enter a living geology textbook, where every step is over evidence of fire, eruption, and upheaval.

Cinder Cone is young by geologic standards—its most recent eruption only about 250 years ago. That blast spread ash across some 35 square miles, buried forests, and reshaped the country into one of California’s strangest wildernesses. Standing at its base, with cinders crunching under your boots and the jagged Fantastic Lava Beds spilling outward like a frozen river of night, you feel as though the eruption ended only yesterday.

The cone is only part of the spectacle. To its west lie the Fantastic Lava Beds, a blackened chaos of basalt where whole trees were engulfed in molten stone. To the south, the Painted Dunes glow with improbable colors—red, ochre, and orange ash layers stained by oxidized minerals. In the afternoon light, the dunes look aflame, as if the eruption never really ended. Few places in the national park system offer such a concentrated mix of starkness and beauty.

The trail itself adds another layer of story. Imagine 1850s pioneers, oxen and wagons in tow, trudging across the cinders. For them, this bizarre landscape was neither geology lesson nor scenic highlight—it was one last brutal obstacle before reaching the Sacramento Valley.

Today, the Cinder Cone hike is both approachable and profound. The short 5-mile round trip is family-friendly, though the final climb up loose cinders is a calf-burner. The longer Snag Lake loop is a rugged all-day trek, offering solitude and deeper immersion in Lassen’s volcanic backcountry. Either way, you’ll come away changed: impressed, awed, and maybe a little humbled by the forces that shaped this wild corner of California.

Lassen’s Lake District

Lassen has a gentler, almost pastoral side—a country of shimmering lakes, green meadows, and rolling forests. I call this region Lassen’s Lake District, and it deserves as much acclaim as the park’s fiery features.

The Lake District spreads across the park’s midsection, accessible from Summit Lake. Unlike the dramatic landscapes carved by eruptions, this country feels downright friendly underfoot: meadows alive with dragonflies, red fir forests filtering sunlight, and lakes rimmed with soft grasses that invite a pause. I like the mix-and-match loops, from a short jaunt to Echo Lake to the big circuit around Horseshoe.

Among the highlights is Grassy Swale, a three-mile-long meadow with a name borrowed from the British countryside. The swale is pure Sierra summer: lupine painting the slopes purple, red paintbrush glowing in the grass, butterflies and frogs adding their own motion and music. Yes, mosquitoes join the party too, but even they can’t spoil the wide-open charm of meadow hiking here.

Each lake on the circuit has its own personality. Echo is small and photogenic. The Twin Lakes—Upper and Lower—are set among quiet camps and shaded shoreline. Swan is modest but secluded, a gem for solitude-seekers. And Horseshoe Lake, the largest of all, offers a broad, inviting sweep of water that demands a swim.

Here’s a Lassen less traveled. No boiling mudpots here, no steaming fumaroles. Instead: forest shade, wildflower meadows, lake reflections, and the chance to wander for a day or more in a landscape where water, not fire, is the guiding force.

Lassen has variety, that’s for sure. In a single short visit you can stand atop an active volcano, walk among boiling mudpots, wander through lava fields, swim in an alpine lake, and hike through meadows bright with wildflowers.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always had a soft spot for Lassen.

Even as more people discover it, Lassen still rewards the kind of experience many of us are seeking these days: room to wander, room to breathe, and trails that feel like discoveries rather than destinations.

If you’ve never been, this might be the year to change that.

Footnotes

Check out Lassen National Park on my site and learn about a half-dozen of my favorite hikes.

Planning a trip? Take a look at Lassen: Know Before You Go

Beyond Half Dome, less famous granite treasures hiding in plain sight.

Yosemite Valley in peak season can test even a hiker’s love of wilderness.

Traffic crawls around the valley loop. Parking lots overflow before breakfast. Trails to Vernal Fall and Upper Yosemite Falls resemble hiker conveyor belts

I was one of many who applauded the National Park Service when it implemented a reservation system during the pandemic years. Millions still visited Yosemite, and visitation continued climbing, but at least the park regained a measure of breathing room. A measure of quiet.

This year, with the reservation system abandoned under pressure from the Trump administration, the crowds feel bigger than ever. And yet…

The moment I catch sight of Half Dome rising above the Valley, all irritation disappears. That impossible granite face still stops me cold, just as it did the first time I saw it more than half a century ago.

Which may explain Yosemite’s dilemma. The park is too beautiful for its own good.

My solution isn’t to avoid Yosemite. It’s to walk sideways through it.

Because Yosemite is a land of domes, not just the Dome.

Half Dome gets all the glory. Fair enough—it’s one of the most recognizable hunks of granite on the planet. But Yosemite’s granite world extends far beyond its celebrity summit.

Sentinel Dome, North Dome, Lembert Dome—these are the quieter siblings in Yosemite’s granite family. Walk up them, not up to them, and you’re rewarded with sweeping, 360-degree views that rival anything in the park. From North Dome, you even get something Half Dome can’t offer: a perfect, face-to-face view of Half Dome itself. Consider it a little granite irony.

For the geology-minded, here’s the short version: deep underground, molten rock cooled slowly into massive granite. Then came uplift, glaciers, and a process called exfoliation—layers of rock peeling away like an onion left out in the Sierra sun. What’s left are these smooth, rounded domes, polished and shaped over millennia.

Best of all, the trails to these domes tend to see fewer hikers. They sit just far enough from Yosemite Valley’s busy corridor to feel like discoveries.

Same park.

Different perspective.

Sentinel Dome

Rarely does so little hiking buy such a sweeping view. From the rounded top of 8,122-foot Sentinel Dome, Yosemite’s icons are arrayed like a diorama: Half Dome to the east, El Capitan to the north, Yosemite Falls plunging from the rim, and the Clark Range rising in the distance.

For years, the most famous tree in Yosemite also stood here — the twisted Jeffrey pine immortalized by Ansel Adams. It finally toppled in 2003, but the dome remains a place where photography, poetry, and geology all compete for attention.

Compared to Glacier Point, the dome feels more personal. You earned your panorama, step by step on a 2.2 miles round trip hike, rather than driving up. And the crowds, though steady, are never as overwhelming.

North Dome

From the floor of Yosemite Valley, Half Dome is untouchable—always above, always iconic. From North Dome, you finally stare it in the face. No glass, no guardrails, no crowds—just you and the granite giant, eyeball to eyeball across Tenaya Canyon. Few spots in the park offer this kind of intimacy with the most famous hunk of rock in America. Half Dome fans say the Yosemite icon offers superior views, but North Dome devotees point out that North Dome offers something Half Dome can’t provide—a view of Half Dome.

From a Yosemite floor perspective, 7,542-foot North Dome dominates the north wall of Tenaya Canyon opposite Half Dome. It appears impossible to ascend but, surprisingly, the rounded mass of granite can be traveled and topped by a moderately graded pathway.

The 9-mile round trip hike (with a modest 600-foot elevation gain) to North Dome begins at Porcupine Flat, home to scores of the namesake creature, whose favorite food source is the inner bark of conifers—lodgepole pines in particular. A generous selection of other Yosemite trees may be glimpsed en route: Western white pine, Jeffrey pine, red fir, and huckleberry oak. Several life zones overlap at this elevation (about 8,000 feet), creating this intriguing collection.

Extra added attraction for the hike is Indian Rock, an unusual stone arch perched atop Indian Ridge. The delicate, 20-foot arch, scarcely one foot thick at its thickest part, is not Yosemite’s only arch (another is below the surface of the Tuolumne River) but it is the only one accessible to hikers.

The hike itself is a sampler of Yosemite high country: a bit of forest shade, a broad ridge with wildflowers in spring, some classic Sierra granite slabs. North Dome waits at the end like a balcony seat in the world’s grandest theater. Walk out onto its smooth summit and the Valley rearranges itself: Clouds Rest stretches long and lean above, Glacier Point juts dramatically opposite, and far below, the Merced bends and glitters.

This is a hike that makes you work a little—long enough and high enough to matter—but pays off with a view that stays with you, a conversation across a valley you’ll never forget.

Lembert Dome

Some domes require a long preamble. Lembert gets right to the point—a clean granite whale shouldering up from Tuolumne Meadows, begging you to climb its back and see what the high country is really about. In the time it takes to sip a cup of coffee, you can be on top staring at a 360-degree map come to life: Cathedral Range marching south, the meadows braided with river light, Mt. Dana’s dark shoulders to the east.

The 9,450-foot dome looks impossible to scale when regarding it from the trailhead, but fear not. For the time-short (but not stamina-short) traveler, able to do only one hike (3.5 miles round trip with 900-foot elevation gain) in the Tuolumne Meadows area, Lembert Dome is the one to do. From atop the dome, you’ll have Tuolumne Meadows and Yosemite Valley at your feet, and view a parade of peaks from Cathedral Peak all the way to Mt. Dana at Tioga Pass.

Geologists say Lembert Dome is not a true dome (such as Sentinel Dome) but a rouche moutoonee; the French phrase “rock sheep” describes a glacier-carved formation recognized by its sheer front and sloping back. The rouche moutoonee was named for shepherd/naturalist Jean Baptiste Lembert, who began work in Tuolumne Meadows in 1885. An unsolved mystery to this day is who shot him dead in his cabin—and why—in 1896.

Kids love the hike to Lembert Dome; so do geologists and anyone with a camera. The companion piece, Dog Lake, sits in a forested bowl and invites a cool detour either before or after the summit.

Half Dome deserves its fame. But Yosemite’s quieter domes offer something increasingly rare in the modern national park experience: space to sit with the landscape rather than simply pass through it.

Ascend one of them early in the morning, before the Valley traffic builds and the crowds gather below, and Yosemite begins to feel immense again.

Footnotes

More details about hiking the domes at thetrailmaster.com:

• Sentinel Dome
• North Dome
• Lembert Dome

To learn more about tectonic forces, glacial activity, and how domes got to be domes, check out Yosemite National Park’s Geology Tour.

From Mendocino’s fogbound headlands to Big Sur’s volcanic rock and San Diego’s harbor edge—walk to light stations shaped by isolation, duty, and the pull of the sea.

Something about a lighthouse pulls us in.

Maybe it’s the setting—perched on a headland, wind in your face, the Pacific stretching out beyond sight. Or maybe it’s the lives once lived there: keepers and families holding their post through fog, storm, and long stretches of isolation.

Along California’s coast, a handful of these light stations remain—not relics, but places you can still walk to, stand in, and look out from.

In this issue of Hike On, I take you to three of my favorites—Point Cabrillo on the North Coast, Pt. Sur rising out of the Big Sur cliffs, and Old Point Loma above San Diego Bay. Three short hikes. Three very different stretches of coast. And three places where the light still feels close at hand.

Point Cabrillo Light Station State Historic Park

Hiking in Point Cabrillo Light Station State Historic Park offers stunning coastal views and a journey through history. Centerpiece of the 300-acre park, located just north of Mendocino is a beautifully restored 1909 lighthouse.

Atop the lighthouse spins a Fresnel lens—four panels, 90 prisms, 6,800 pounds of optical muscle. The tower itself rises only 32 feet, but perched on the headlands it commands the Pacific like a quiet sentinel. At sunset, the whole scene glows—the lens, the tower, the white buildings—like something painted rather than built.

Outside, behold the natural world. Black-shouldered kites, northern harriers, and marsh hawks swoop over the grasslands. Black oyster catchers, cormorants and pigeon guillemots nest on the rocks offshore from Point Cabrillo. Harbor seals bob in the kelp-fringed water. When the gray whales migrate, they pass close by, while farther out, the spouts of humpback and blue whales can often be seen.

It’s an easy half-mile stroll down the access road to the Light Station. For a longer exploration of the park’s dramatic coastline, take North Trail, which leads across a coastal prairie. You’ll come to a trail junction with one of the strangest—and perhaps most hilarious—trail signs I’ve ever seen. The sign has two arrows: one points “To the Ocean and Lighthouse,” the other to “Tick Infested Area.” Hard choice, eh?

The trail leads to Frolic Cove, where the opium-trading brig Frolic wrecked on a reef in 1850 and became a prime example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Investigators of the shipwreck couldn’t help noticing the vast coast redwood forests of the Mendocino area and it wasn’t long before loggers arrived, beginning timber operations that would destroy most of the surrounding old-growth forests.

It’s easy hiking to the lighthouse, yes—but linger a little. This is a place where history isn’t behind glass. It’s in the wind, the buildings, the long view out to sea.

Read the Full Trail Guide

Pt. Sur Light Station State Historic Park

From Highway 1, the volcanic rock of Pt. Sur looks like something out of a sea captain’s dream—or nightmare. A 361-foot black basalt plug, it rises abruptly from the Pacific like a stranded island, its crown dotted with ghostly stone buildings. For decades it was also a mariner’s nightmare: the fog-shrouded headland and submerged reefs claimed countless ships before the government finally funded a beacon in 1885.

When the Pt. Sur Light became operational in 1889, its massive Fresnel lens cast a light 23 miles out to sea. Whale oil fueled the first lamps, then kerosene, then electricity, until automation arrived in 1975. By then, four generations of lighthouse keepers and their families had endured a life that was as lonely as it was dramatic. Supplies came by wagon or later by truck along the treacherous coastal road, and storms often cut them off for weeks.

Today the light station is preserved as a time capsule of coastal life. On a guided tour you’ll step inside the keeper’s quarters, blacksmith shop, and barn (yes, livestock once lived on the rock), and of course up to the lantern room where the mighty lens once shone.

And then there’s the view: stand atop Pt. Sur and gaze south toward Bixby Bridge, north to Monterey Bay, west to a horizon where the sun falls into the Pacific. It’s the same view that keepers stared into for generations—half beauty, half duty.

Read the Full Trail Guide

Old Point Loma Lighthouse

Cabrillo National Monument may be short on hiking mileage, but it’s long on history, views, and coastal charm. Perched at the tip of Point Loma, the park offers a fascinating mix: the Old Point Loma Lighthouse, tidepools teeming with sea life, and the Bayside Trail that delivers sweeping views of San Diego.

Built in 1855, the original Point Loma Lighthouse shined proudly over the entrance to San Diego Bay — but at 422 feet above sea level, it was often swallowed by fog and clouds. After just 36 years, it was abandoned for a new light on lower ground. Today, the old lighthouse is beautifully restored to its 1880s appearance, complete with period furnishings from the days when keeper Captain Israel and his family lived there. Rangers give talks and tours, and the lighthouse remains one of the monument’s most charming highlights.

Bayside Trail begins near the old lighthouse. Along the way, enjoy fine views of San Diego Harbor’s busy shipping lanes. Sometimes, rangers even broadcast commentary when Navy ships, freighters, or cruise liners pass below. The views are the star: to the east, the city skyline and mountains beyond; to the south, the sweep of Mexico’s coastline; and to the west, the wide Pacific.

Read the Full Trail Guide

Footnotes

Plan your visit at Point Cabrillo Light Station operated in partnership with State Parks by the nonprofit Point Cabrillo Lightkeepers Association, which oversees the Light Station and lighthouse keepers’ cottages, staffs an excellent visitor center, and conducts tours. Be sure to check out the many trails in the state parks nearby—Mendocino Headlands, MacKerricher, and Russian Gulch.

Learn more about tours offered on weekend mornings at Pt. Sur State Historic Park, located on the west side of Highway 1, 19 miles south of Carmel. And now with Highway 1 fully open, you can drive north to reach it!

A heads-up: Cabrillo National Monument has a lot of charm and very strict operating hours.

Walk two iconic islands—one shaped by nature and memory, the other by myth and history—both just a ferry ride from San Francisco.

I’ve always had a thing for islands.

Call me an islophile. Early in my writing career, I chased islands around the globe—from Tahiti to the Shetlands, from Crete to Corfu. But some of my favorite island adventures are much closer to home.

Out on San Francisco Bay, a short ferry ride can feel like a long journey. Within minutes, the city slips away, replaced by wind, water, and a sense of separation that only islands provide.

Each of these islands tells a different California story.

Angel Island invites you to walk through layers of history—Coast Miwok homelands, military outposts, and the poignant Immigration Station—while hiking ridgelines with sweeping views of the Golden Gate and the skyline beyond.

Alcatraz, once home to the likes of Al Capone, now belongs to seabirds and sea spray, its prison walls softened by time and tide.

Two islands. Two experiences.

All just a boat ride away.

Angel Island

From Tiburon, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, it takes only ten minutes by ferry to reach Angel Island, but once you step ashore, you’re in another world. A world of layered histories, where each cove and ridge seems to carry a new chapter of California’s story.

The Coast Miwok fished these waters for centuries before the Spanish sailed in. Later, pirates used the coves as hideouts. In Mexican times, Angel Island was part of a land grant. The U.S. Army claimed it during the Civil War, building Camp Reynolds and placing gun batteries to defend San Francisco Bay.

Then came the age of quarantine. Returning soldiers with tropical diseases were isolated here. Immigrants too—especially Chinese—were detained at the infamous Immigration Station between 1910 and 1943. Under the Chinese Exclusion Act, thousands waited here in limbo, their futures determined by interrogations and bureaucratic suspicion. Many carved poems into the barracks walls: poems of longing, anger, and resilience. Reading them today is one of the most moving experiences in the entire State Park system.

And Angel Island’s military career didn’t stop there. It served as a staging point for World War II troops, then as a Nike missile base during the Cold War. Only later, through the perseverance of conservationists and the vision of State Parks, was the island transformed into what we know now: a sanctuary of history and nature in the very heart of San Francisco Bay.

Rocky coves and sandy beaches, grassy slopes and forested ridges, plus a fine trail network, add up to a hiker’s delight. The five-mile Perimeter Road gives a grand tour of the island, with new views around every bend—San Francisco’s skyline, the Golden Gate Bridge, Mount Tamalpais, Alcatraz. Sunset Trail climbs to the island’s highest point, 781-foot Mount Caroline Livermore, for a 360-degree panorama that’s breathtaking on a clear day and mystical when the fog drapes the Bay like a theater curtain.

This isn’t just a walk through the past—it’s a living natural experience. Deer graze the meadows, hawks circle above the ridges, and in spring, wildflowers paint the hillsides. I’ve hiked Angel Island many times, and each time feels new. Sometimes San Francisco is hidden entirely, swallowed in gray. Then the curtain lifts, and there it is: gleaming towers across the Bay, as though revealed for the first time.

Few parks combine history and nature in such a small space, and few hikes are as satisfying. Angel Island is a reminder that the Bay itself is a dramatic stage, and we hikers get front-row seats.

Read the Full Trail Guide

Alcatraz Island

Once the island was populated with the likes of Al “Scarface” Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, and a couple hundred more incorrigibles. Now the isle’s most distinguished residents are the black-crowned night heron, double-crested cormorant, and a few thousand Western gulls.

The birds, with National Park Service encouragement, have taken over Alcatraz. Restoring “The Rock” to some semblance of a natural world has been part of the park service’s mission ever since it inherited this storied slab of stone. And it’s working—these days, the raucous cries of gulls have replaced the clang of prison doors.

The island’s story is long and layered. The Pacific Coast’s first lighthouse was built here in 1854. Later, Alcatraz became a military prison, holding Civil War deserters, Native American leaders, and conscientious objectors from World War I. Then came the infamous years (1934–1963) as the nation’s maximum-security showcase, where “public enemies” were caged within sight of San Francisco’s bright lights.

When the prison closed, the island was abandoned to seabirds and sea spray—until 1973, when it opened as part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Since then, millions of visitors have ferried across the bay for a mix of prison lore, history walks, and ranger-led talks on subjects ranging from escape attempts to natural history. The 45-minute audio tour, narrated by former guards and inmates, is a perennial favorite.

Agave Trail (1-mile round trip including prison tour) reveals another side of Alcatraz. Planted as a deterrent to would-be rescuers during the prison years, the spiny agaves still spike the slopes. The trail skirts tide pools, overlooks a sea lion haul-out, and offers sweeping views of San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, and Treasure Island. Autumn is the season to come: the trail is open only mid-September through January, closed the rest of the year to protect nesting seabirds. Clear skies, fewer crowds, and hundreds of gulls swirling overhead—this is Alcatraz at its most alive.

Pop culture hasn’t ignored The Rock either. Clint Eastwood brooded here in Escape from Alcatraz. Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage fought off terrorists in The Rock. Hollywood loves the place—but seabirds have the final say.

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Footnotes

You can visit Angel and Alcatraz Islands in one day. One commercial tour operator Alcatraz City Cruises offers ferry service to—and tours—of the islands, but alas for hikers it’s a tram tour not a hike around Angel Island.

Best way for hikers to see both islands is to catch the first ferry of the day to Angel Island from Tiburon. After hiking to your heart’s content, catch the last ferry of the day to Alcatraz. Btw, for a truly eerie experience, join a night tour of Alcatraz!

For a perfect way to end your day on Angel Island, stop for a gelato at Caffe Acri located at 1 Main Street, a short walk from the Tiburon ferry landing. The cozy Italian café is also a great place to start your day, too, with an espresso and pastry or ordering a sandwich to go for your hike.

A place that grows on you—native plants, quiet trails, and a hundred years rooted in California’s wild heart.

There are places we visit—and places that quietly become part of who we are.

For me, the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden is the latter.

In 2026, the Garden marks its centennial—100 years as the first botanic garden in the nation devoted entirely to native plants. That alone is remarkable. But what keeps drawing me back isn’t just history—it’s how alive the place feels. Oaks arch overhead, manzanitas twist like living sculpture, and seasonal blooms remind you that California doesn’t need imported beauty. It’s had it all along.

Nearly 30 years ago, I began bringing my kids here, once a month, for some of their very first hikes. These days, I still like to arrive early, walking a quiet two- or three-mile loop as the sun rises and the plants wake up with the day. It’s a gentle kind of magic—one that doesn’t announce itself, but lingers.

The Garden has endured fire, change, and time itself—from the 1964 Coyote Fire to the 2009 Jesusita Fire—yet remains rooted in its founding idea: that native plants sustain both land and life.

This year, a new Centennial Route traces that story, past the Mission Dam and through a remarkable collection of California flora.

Come walk it.

You may leave with more than you expected.

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

Tucked into the folds of Mission Canyon, the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden is more than a pleasant stroll among flowers—it’s a living celebration of California’s wild heart. Founded in 1926 and still growing, this 65-acre preserve is devoted entirely to California native plants, making it one of the most important botanical collections of its kind in the West.

While other gardens display roses and exotics from around the world, this one proudly says, This is California. Chaparral, oak woodland, redwood forest, desert wash, island flora—each ecosystem is represented with care and authenticity.

Trails thread through the landscape, not merely to guide visitors but to immerse them in miniature versions of California’s great bioregions. You can walk from a sunny desert scene to a shady redwood grove in minutes, feeling as if you’ve crossed half the state. The Easton Aqueduct Trail, named for writer and conservationist Robert Easton, edges the garden like a quiet backcountry loop, while Canyon and Pritchett Trails dip into the cool embrace of Mission Creek.

The garden has also embraced a spirit of adventure, especially for families. A newly expanded Children’s “Backcountry” area invites young trail explorers to scramble on logs, follow mini creek paths, and learn the language of nature not from signs alone but through tactile discovery—hands in the dirt, feet on the trail, imagination engaged. It’s a rare garden that encourages kids not just to look but to play like wild things.

The garden boasts a fine garden shop with quality gifts and field guides, and a well-regarded native plant nursery. Many of the plants grown here are difficult or impossible to find in commercial nurseries, making this a true resource for gardeners who want to bring California’s landscape into their own yards.

The garden is a sanctuary for rare and endangered plants, a research center, a teaching ground, and yes—a peaceful escape just minutes from city life. It offers docent-led walks, lectures, native plant sales, and quiet benches where time seems to slow beneath the oaks. Whether you come for botany, backcountry spirit, or a simple walk in nature, the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden rewards every step.

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Tilden Regional Park Botanic Garden

This little garden is big on California.

Other states may have deserts, mountains, valleys, islands or long coastlines, but only California has all of these environments. And all these environments are represented—10 geographically based sections in 10 acres—in Tilden Regional Park Botanic Garden.

While considerably smaller than better-known botanic gardens, Tilden Garden has much to offer, particularly when it comes to its displays of native California flora. Tree-lovers will be delighted by a walk through the redwoods and by the garden’s comprehensive collections of oaks and conifers.

Other extensive collections include native California grasses, manzanita, and aquatic plants. The garden is also a safe haven for some 300 plants on the California Native Plant Society’s “Rare and Endangered” list.

Begin your exploration of California at the garden visitor center, pick up a brochure/map and head for the Sierra, Channel Islands, or Pacific rain forest. Meander the walkways and across footbridges over Wildcat Creek to reach exceptionally well re-created Golden State landscapes named Santa Lucia, Valley-Foothill, and Shasta-Klamath.

“Imagine 160,000 square miles of California set in a garden that can be walked in a day,” garden boosters suggest. Indeed!

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Theodore Payne Foundation

The Theodore Payne Foundation, dedicated to educating us about the culture and uses of native plants, is a great place to learn about local flora. A walk through the gardens is enlightening; the short hike up Wildflower Hill, inspiring.

Botanist Theodore Payne arrived in Southern California in 1893 from England with a practical knowledge of seeds and soil—and quickly developed something rarer: a sense that California’s native flora was both unique and imperiled. Even then, wildflowers were disappearing under the march of development. Payne responded the only way he knew how—by getting his hands dirty. He collected, cultivated, and championed native plants long before “native plant gardening” became fashionable or hashtag-worthy.

For nearly 60 years, Payne ran nurseries, wrote articles, and gave lectures, quietly making the case that California’s beauty wasn’t just scenic—it was botanical. Today, the foundation that bears his name continues that mission with admirable zeal and just enough dirt under its fingernails.

The nursery itself is part classroom, part temptation. Labels identify everything from manzanita to monkeyflower, and suddenly that shrub you ignored on last week’s hike has a name—and a story. Gardeners arrive with notebooks and leave with armfuls of plants. Hikers arrive curious and leave slightly more observant. It’s a gateway experience: today a labeled sage plant, tomorrow a full-blown appreciation of chaparral ecosystems.

Then there’s Wildflower Hill. In spring, it’s a show-off—poppies blazing, lupine rising in purples and blues, owl’s clover and cream cups filling in the gaps like a well-composed painting. But even outside peak bloom, the hill tells a deeper story about resilience. These are plants adapted to drought, fire, and poor soils—California natives that don’t just survive tough conditions, they define them.

The vibe at Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley is refreshingly unpretentious. Volunteers talk plants, not trends. Classes teach you how to garden without waging war on nature. And the whole place feels like a quiet rebellion against lawns that demand too much water and give too little back.

Footnotes

Walk into Santa Barbara Botanic Garden history on the Centennial Route, with stops at the Desert Section planted in 1927, a redwood grove in the 1930s and ending up at the modern Pritzlaff Conservation Center.

Something is blooming every month at the Tilden Regional Park Botanic Garden, open every day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The garden is lightly visited, even on busy weekends in the park. And admission is free.