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About California:
In some ways, the west coast
is the ultimate "now" society. Anywhere so vulnerable to the
constant threat of the Big One - a massive earthquake of unimaginable
terror - is bound to have a sense of living for the moment. However, its
supposed superficiality is largely fictitious. Although home to such reactionary
figures as Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, it has also been the source
of some of the country's most progressive political movements. The fierce
protests of the Sixties may have died down, but California remains the
heart of liberal America, at the forefront of environmental awareness,
gay pride and social permissiveness, and increasingly a bulwark of the
Demon-cratic Party. Economically, too, the region is crucial, whether
in the film industry, the music business, the financial markets, or the
all-consuming sector of real-estate development.
California is too large to
be fully explored in a single trip, but in an area so varied it's hard
to pick out specific highlights. Los
Angeles is far and away the biggest and most stimulating city: a maddening
collection of freeways, beaches, seedy suburbs, upscale neighborhoods
and extreme lifestyles. From Los Angeles you can head south to the growing
metropolis of San
Diego, with its broad, welcoming beaches and easy access to Mexico;
or push inland to the desert areas, most notably Death Valley, a barren
and inhospitable landscape of volcanic craters and salt pans that in summer
becomes the hottest place on earth.
Most people, though, follow
the shoreline north up the central coast: a gorgeous run that takes in
lively small towns like Santa Barbara and Santa
Cruz. California's second city, San
Francisco, at the top end, is about as different from LA as it's possible
to get: the oldest, most European-styled city in the state, set on a series
of steep hills, its wooden houses tumbling down to water on three sides.
It is also well placed for the national parks to the east, such as Yosemite,
where waterfalls cascade into a sheer glacial valley, and Sequoia/Kings
Canyon with its gigantic trees, as well as the ghost towns of the Gold
Country. North of San Francisco the countryside becomes wilder, wetter
and greener, approaching Oregon through spectacular and almost deserted
volcanic tablelands.
The climate in southern
California consists of seemingly endless days of sunshine and warm
dry nights, with occasional bouts of torrential flooding in the winter.
LA's notorious smog is at its worst when the temperatures are highest,
from July through September. All along the coast mornings can be hazily
overcast, especially in May and June; in exposed San Francisco it can
be chilly all year, and fog rolls in to ruin many a sunny day. Much more
so than in the south, winter in northern California can bring rain for
weeks on end, causing massive mudslides that wipe out roads and hillside
homes. Most hiking trails in the mountains are blocked between October
and June by the snow that keeps California's ski slopes among the busiest
in the nation and California
ski resorts some of the most beautiful anywhere, particularly the
ski resorts
near Lake Tahoe.
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