Outdoor Recreation

What greater pleasure can you imagine than seeing deer, hawks, dolphins, and whales on the same bike ride? Welcome to California’s varied landscape, where the same 30-mile loop takes you along the ocean and through the forest. Small wonder that California is a cyclist’s paradise. Like dirt? Not to name-drop, but Marin’s Mt. Tamalpais gave birth to mountain biking. Check out the state’s other knobby-tire nirvanas— Downieville , Mt. Shasta , Death Valley, and Mammoth Mountain’s Bike Park , with its gondola ride to the mountain summit and 90-plus miles of trails. Heaven can be discovered just as easily on the road. Pedal by the wine grapes coveted the world over, within view of towering snowcapped peaks, or on a certain famous bridge alongside the sparkling Pacific. The world’s top professionals in California’s prestigious Amgen Tour of California have to ride by them all, but you can pick and choose. And you can stop to enjoy breakfast, shop at a farmers’ market, or even wonder at a passing deer or a whale.

The massive trees at Sequoia National Park, the quirky cactus in Joshua Tree National Park and the moonlit face of Yosemite’s Half Dome—these are just a smattering of views you can enjoy from your tent flap. Twenty percent of California’s land is protected, and plenty of it is available for a vast range of camping options . Choose the convenient route and park the RV , and your family, at the edge of Lake Tahoe. Or hoist a backpack and head for the backcountry of the Los Padres National Forest near Ojai, where you can hike to a swimming hole framed by a granite gorge. You can even take a boat out to one of the five islands of Southern California’s Channel Islands National Park and camp where sea lions outnumber campers a thousand to one.

In the far north, you can stand in the Smith River and hope that a world-record steelhead strikes your hand-tied fly. In Redding, and the Sacramento River that runs through it, you can find one of the world’s top trout fisheries. Monster bass swim in Lake Casitas and Clear Lake, and along the San Joaquin River. Prefer the ocean? Cast a line from a pier or a beach, or from sport-fishing boats churning out of Crescent City, Monterey, Oxnard, and every harbor in between. California’s coastal waters host salmon, seabass, yellowtail, and lingcod swirling beneath your line. Want big game? Try hooking into a sailfish off Catalina Island or hop aboard a long-range boat out of San Diego and head to legendary Mexican isles to fish for enormous bluefin tuna. Dangle a line and then see what rises.

Who has not felt the urge, as John Muir put it, to “throw a loaf of bread and pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence”? Succumbing to this impulse in California is as easy as it is fun. California offers just about any kind of hiking terrain you can imagine: desert oases, empty beaches, lava moonscapes, tidal estuaries with world-class bird-watching, and untouched snowfields where you can lay down the first snowshoe tracks. If you like mountains, try Mt. Whitney or other peaks in Muir’s beloved Sierra Nevada, or Mt. Shasta in the Cascades. You could disappear for months on the Pacific Coast Trail, which snakes the length of California, rarely leaving a national park or forest. Or maybe you’d prefer a serene redwood grove. Want to stay close to the back fence? Within Los Angeles, you’ll find trails where you can look out on a sea of winking city lights while listening to coyotes howl. Point your feet in any direction and let the magic begin.

California has wind and water in every shape and form. San Francisco Bay’s Mach winds are legendary. So are the muscular winds off San Diego and Ventura. Just off Ventura, local sailors tuck into coves on Santa Cruz Island, wiling away the afternoon in a hammock before plucking (in season) the evening’s lobster dinner off the bottom. California’s interior is pocked with lakes made for sailing and windsurfing—from the vast spread of Shasta to the tidy confines of Bass Lake, where children maneuver Sunfish as adroitly as any America’s Cup skipper. If you can’t squeeze a sailboat into your suitcase, nearly every marina offers rentals, from ultralite J-24 racing sloops to 35-foot cruisers that sleep four. Don’t know how to sail? Take lessons . Or let your chartered skipper manage matters, while you heft a cocktail and consider the full moon’s reflection on the water.