Quirky Named Places and What to Do There, Episode 9
Number nine already. We’re going places! Back stateside. We’ll make more international visits of course. This installment is all about the Golden State, California. It’s my native state. As children, we camped, canoed, sailed, climbed desert dunes by moonlight, skied on water and snow. Bounced around the big cities, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, and my home region the San Francisco Bay Area. All seasons the Bear Republic is a wonderland of varied climates, lush green forests, rugged coastal watery worlds, parched deserts, and alpine wilds.
Most visitors are in awe the distances between the state’s major cities, to the glorious parks on the eastern boundary, Yosemite, Death Valley, and Lake Tahoe all are naturally spectacular. Most adventures around California begin in one of the three major urban sprawls, the greater San Francisco region, including San Jose, the gateway to Silicon Valley and all things high tech. Down south, the Los Angeles megaplex and the laid-back San Diego are so vast, the two metro areas come close to overlapping. There’s plenty more to see way out west, here we go!
Zzyzx, CA
Begin at the end…of the alphabet. What an odd name indeed. The peculiar vowel-less name is the creation of a clever entrepreneur in the 1940s. He built a health spa near a natural desert spring. The spring…
