Things to see and do in Palm Springs

Winter-time temperature of 70 degrees makes Palm Spring attractive to residents of snow-covered or rain-soaked areas. So when you come visit, check out the following:

• Andreas Canyon - Easy hike with lush oasis and California fan palms.
• Indian Canyons - Complex canyon with trails and picnic spots.
• North of town - See 5 ecological zones in 10 minutes, largest rotating aerial tramcar. 54 miles of trails. If it snows, you can cross-country ski or snowshoe. 
• Palm Spring Art Museum (PSAM) in downtown - free on 2nd Sunday of the month and 4-8 pm on Thurs. Mostly western landscapes and contemporary art.
• Palm Springs International Film Festival in January - Best foreign films and documentaries. Get to the box office hours before any screening for last-minute rush tickest for single show. OR get the pass. 
• Sunnyland - 200-acre residence of publishing titan, Walter Annenberg in Rancho Mirage. Desert garden, Rodin and Giacometti scuptures, and other art collections. Scheduled to open in March.
• Tahquitz Canyon - 60-foot waterfall is short strall from downtown. 
• Uptown district - Check out shops and galleries with retro furnitures. 
• Villagefest - A block from the PSAM. On Thursday evening, the downtown street scente turns into pop-up market/block party. try the half-dozen varieties of locally grown dates and local farm produce.
  

Places to eat:

• Koffi - Organic Peruvian iced coffee and flaky pastry. 
• Cheeky's= Try the custard cheesy scrambled eggs or the 5-styles of bacon.
• King's Highway
• Le Vallauris - Fancypants. Great place to watch desert sunset.

Places to stay:

• AAA discount in Hyatt GRand Champions Resort in Indian Wells (from $100)

Source: This article was condensed from AAA Via magazine Nov+Dec 2011 issue

Las Vegas deals

Try this site for the best deals on Las Vegas: http://smartervegas.com/

For cheap, centrally located hotel (right on the strip), try the Imperial Palace. It's like throwing the dice. For $33 (+ more during peak), you can get a clean room... or a really smoky one with clogged showers. The elevators are slow.  (The hotel might not be around for too long.)

Spectacular autumnal road trip on Utah's Highway 12

Utah's Highway 12 is also known as Journey Through Time Scenic Byway. This 125-mile curvaceous two-lane road is jam-packed with four state parks, two national parks, a national forest, and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. It is particularly spectacular during the fall.

Start from outside Panguitch (about 250 miles south of Salt Lake City), to red canyons, hoodoos, Bryce Canyon National Park (with Fairyland Point, just outside the gate, as a highlight). Next, move on to Kodachrome Basin State Park with its gravity-defying sandstone chimneys, and then to Escalante Petrified Forest State Park with multi-colored petrified trees.

At milepost 75, you climb up Hogsback with views of the rounded dome of Navajo Mountain. After passing by Boulder Mountain, you end in Torrey, where you can hustle over to the Capitol Reef National Park.

And don't miss out on Hell's Backbone Grill, which is a gourmet destination.

For more information, see http://www.utah.com/byways/highway_12.htm and AAA Via magazine.

Picture from: http://utahpictures.com/Highway_12_Dec.php

Places to hike in Lake Tahoe

The 165-mile Tahoe Rim Trail goes around Tahoe. For easy access, take the Tahoe Meadows Interpretive Trails on the North Shore for wildflowers and view of Echo lakes and water-taxi rides. On the east side, Kingsbury Grade North Trail offers vistas over the lake to Emerald Bay.

Lassen Volcanic National Park

From: http://www.searchpictures.net/

Congress established 166 square miles of wilderness at the southern tip of the Cascade Range, 50 miles east of Redding. Its lava domes, waterfalls, and forested lakes are as breathtaking as the beauty of Yosemite, yet it is not overrun by tourists (not even 1/10th of the visitors!). The top draw is the hike through the giant lava tube, 700-foot high cinder cone, and steaming lake.

Come July, when the snow melts, the national park's amazing geology is supplemented by wildflowers that explode across the alpine meadows.

Mount Harkness offers awesome views and a ton of wildflowers (better than Lassen Peak).  Bumpass Hell (With a name like that? Who would want to skip out?) is a 16-acre cauldron of steaming ponds, steam vents, and boiling mud pots. Yellowstone Jr!

Start the day in the Kohm Yah-mah-nee visitor center and end it on sunset at the Pilot Pinnacle.

No lodging within the park, though.

Northern California Coastal Escapes

Monterey accommodations.

Exploring California's coastline

From AAA.


Snowy plovers on Haul Road, north of Fort Bragg + Barbecuing bivalves at a Tomales Bay oyster farm + Spotting bat rays from the end of Estero Trail in Point Reyes + Sand castles at Stinson Beach + San Francisco's Beach Chalet + Phipps "U-pick" Country Store and Farm in Pescadero + Santa Cruz's Mystery Spot + Big Sur's Bixby Bridge + Pier fishing in Morro Bay + The views from Malibu's Adamson House + Basketball on the Venice Beach courts + Digging holes at Huntington Dog Beach + Sighting gray whales in Dana Point Harbor + Launching a model yacht in Mission Bay Park, San Diego

Snowshoeing in Olympic Park, Washington

It’s a La Niña year, which means that storms are hitting the Pacific Northwest in a big way. And Olympic National Park offers two ways to take advantage of the wild weather. Skiers can tackle Hurricane Ridge, the mile-high ski and snowboard area, which has massive bowls and glades with 400-plus inches of snow each year. Lifts operate only on weekends, but Hurricane Ridge Road and its visitor center will be open seven days a week for the first time during the 2011 season, so cross-country skiers and snowshoers have all-day, everyday access to the unmarked and ungroomed trails in the forests and meadows around the ridge.

Nonskiers can head to the park’s historic lodges, Lake Quinault and Kalaloch, for rooms with fireplaces and epic views. This year, the two lodges are offering “storm-watching” specials through the winter and early spring that include lodging as well as breakfast, rain ponchos, souvenir blankets and rain-forest tour options.

Culinary masterpieces in the San Juan Islands in Washington

From the New York Times.

Bold-face restaurateurs vie with unspoiled nature. Nature wins.

The big draw for the San Juan Islands this year just might be its dining scene. Blaine Wetzel, a former chef at the wildly acclaimed Copenhagen restaurant Noma, took the reins at Willows Inn on Lummi Island (due to reopen on Feb. 10), while Lisa Nakamura, who has trained with big-name chefs like Thomas Keller, opened Allium on Orcas Island.

But the eternal lure of the San Juans — what brings chefs out as well as tourists — are the landscapes. On islands from Shaw to Decatur, pastoral hills give way to broody forests and scrappy escarpments that overlook fjordlike inlets. Thanks to an active land preservation effort by organizations like the San Juan County Land Bank, each year new areas are protected from logging or unruly development, and in turn provide fresh terrain for the public to explore.

Last year, the San Juan Island National Historic Park grew by 312 acres with the purchase of densely forested Mitchell Hill. On Lopez Island, a 50-year lease signed by the state Department of Natural Resources in 2009 now protects the Lopez Hill area from logging; a web of public trails winds past mossy conifers and madrona trees with peeling cinnamon-red bark. And some smaller parcels have the air of a secret about them, like the spectacular Watmough Bay Preserve on Lopez, with a trail that leads to a strip of beach on a wooded inlet, its moody water as magically lighted as a Bierstadt painting.