Things to do in Balboa Park, the San Diego park whose palaces were never meant to last
A century ago, San Diego threw up a city of Spanish palaces for a two-year fair and then simply kept them. Today they hold 17…
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3 days in San Diego? Here’s how to fit in Balboa Park, the beaches and a cliff-top sunset
Seventeen museums in one park, sea lions snoozing below a village of boutiques, a wooden rollercoaster on the sand and a lighthouse on the point…
22 things to do in San Diego, from sea lions at sunset to a speakeasy behind a hidden door
San Diego does daytime beautifully: sunshine, surf and a park bigger than Central Park. But stick around once the sun drops into the Pacific and…
20 brilliant day trips from Palm Springs
Two hours in any direction from a Palm Springs sun lounger, you can watch sunrise over a national park, roar out of a T. rex’s…
The 10-day Southern California road trip itinerary filled with salt flats, sand dunes and vast national parks
Start in Hollywood, wake at 4am for a sunrise that turns a salt pan pink, spend your nights under skies dark enough to show the…
The best national parks in California, the only state with nine of them
Salt flats below sea level, the biggest tree on the planet, a volcano that last erupted just over a century ago and islands you can…
Visiting the Cabazon Dinosaurs, the desert giants you can climb inside
Two concrete giants have been pulling drivers off the I-10 for half a century, and one of them hides a staircase that leads up to…
Visiting the Moorten Botanical Garden, the Palm Springs cactus garden that coined the word cactarium
Behind a modest gate on the south side of Palm Springs, one family has spent almost 90 years packing more than 3,000 kinds of desert…
A self-guided tour of Palm Springs’ mid-century modern architecture, from Elvis’s honeymoon house to Sinatra’s piano-shaped pool
Palm Springs has one of the finest collections of mid-century modern buildings anywhere, yet most of its famous houses are private homes you can only…
Agua Serena Spa review: the Indian Wells day spa worth leaving Palm Springs for
Palm Springs has pools on every corner, so is a spa half an hour down the valley worth the drive? Here’s my review of Agua…
The best time to visit Joshua Tree National Park, and the months that beat spring
Wildflowers, snow on the mountains, 100°F afternoons and nights dark enough to show the Milky Way: Joshua Tree changes completely from one season to the…
27 things to do in Palm Springs, Old Hollywood’s favourite desert hideaway
Hollywood’s stars have been slipping out to Palm Springs for the weekend since the 1930s, and the city still knows how to show you a…
A guide to Hidden Valley in Joshua Tree, the walled-in valley where cattle rustlers hid their herds
Hidden Valley is a pocket of desert sealed in by walls of granite, reached through a narrow gap in the rocks and once used by…
A guide to the Skull Rock trail, the Joshua Tree loop to a boulder that stares back
There are plenty of incredible hikes in Joshua Tree, but few end with a rock looking back at you. Here’s where to park for Skull…
How to hike the Arch Rock trail in Joshua Tree, an easy loop to the park’s most famous arch
Arch Rock is a 30ft granite arch hidden in a maze of boulders on the eastern side of Joshua Tree National Park, at the end…
A 3-day Joshua Tree itinerary that saves the strangest stop for last
Joshua Tree National Park spreads across two deserts and close to 800,000 acres, with its best sights miles apart on empty desert roads. This three-day…
The 17 best things to do in Joshua Tree National Park (and the best time of day for each)
The trees here aren’t really trees, the fluffiest-looking cactus in the desert will happily hitch a ride on your leg, and the finest view in…
How to spend 2 days in Palm Springs (and still catch sunrise in Joshua Tree)
Palm Springs squeezes palm-filled canyons, a cactus garden planted in 1938, a 26-foot Marilyn Monroe and some of the finest mid-century homes in America into…
A guide to Badwater Basin, the Death Valley salt flats 282ft below sea level
Badwater Basin is the great white salt pan on the floor of Death Valley, and the lowest point in North America. Here’s how the salt…
Hiking Mosaic Canyon in Death Valley, through narrows of polished marble
A few minutes’ walk from the car park above Stovepipe Wells, the walls of Mosaic Canyon close in to narrows of white and grey marble,…
How to hike Golden Canyon and Gower Gulch, the most popular short walk in Death Valley
Golden Canyon starts at a car park on Badwater Road and, within minutes, closes in around you with walls of yellow and cream rock laid…
3 days in Death Valley, built around a sunrise on the ridge and the dunes after dark
Death Valley National Park covers more than three million acres, and its big sights can sit an hour or more apart. So which corner gets…
The best hikes in Death Valley National Park (they start earlier than you think)
Strap on your hiking boots and prepare for an adventure. These trails squeeze through polished marble narrows, cross a salt flat far below sea level…
21 things to do in Death Valley National Park that feel like another planet
The lowest, hottest and driest national park in the US is also one of the strangest places I’ve ever been. Where’s the view worth a…
A guide to the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, the Death Valley dunes you can walk straight onto
Heard of the Death Valley sand dunes? The most famous of them sit right beside the main road through the park, and you can be…
Why stargazing in Death Valley is worth staying up late for
Get ready to see the night sky as it looked before anyone switched on a light bulb. Where should you set up your chair? Which…
The best places for sunrise and sunset in Death Valley (one is worth a 4am alarm)
Death Valley is one of the hottest, driest places on Earth, and for an hour either side of sunrise and sunset it becomes somewhere else…
The best beaches in California, including one you might have all to yourself
California has more than 800 miles of coastline and hundreds of public beaches, so which ones are actually worth the drive? There’s a beach made…
The cool places in LA that show off the city’s weird and wonderful side
Los Angeles, it’s ON. Where can you walk through a tunnel made of books? Which museum keeps its visitors guessing what’s real? And where do…
24 San Francisco landmarks worth every hill you’ll climb to reach them
Why is the Golden Gate Bridge orange rather than gold? Which prison island still lets you walk its cellblocks? And where in the city does…
Los Angeles landmarks: 19 icons, 14 of them free to see
From the Hollywood Sign and the Walk of Fame to the Getty, the Broad and a Gothic bridge most visitors never find, these are the…
Joshua Tree National Park: 16 best hikes and how to visit
Giant boulders, a hidden arch, a rock shaped like a skull and palm oases tucked into desert canyons: these are the best hikes in Joshua…
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