A baker’s dozen: More of the most beautiful places in Northern California

Tim Viall
·5 min read
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Summer is upon us, kids are out of school and talk turns to top trip destinations. Recent conversations with friends and suggestions from Record readers yield our list of most beautiful places in Northern California. Criteria included stunning scenery, one-of-a-kind destinations and within a “one tank” drive. To offer both ideas and start arguments, we offered seven recommendations last week; here are the balance of our top 13:

Read more: These are some of the most beautiful places in Northern California

Highway 49, the Gold Rush Highway

A Wells Fargo Stagecoach thunders down Sutter Creek’s historic Main Street, lined with 19th century architecture, shops, wine-tasting, restaurants.
A Wells Fargo Stagecoach thunders down Sutter Creek’s historic Main Street, lined with 19th century architecture, shops, wine-tasting, restaurants.

The historic highway links together the towns and gold mines that put California on the map, starting with gold discovery in Coloma in 1848 and the massive Gold Rush in 1849 that quadrupled the state’s population in the following dozen years.

Start your tour in Coloma, at Marshall Gold Discovery State Park, and follow the highway through lovely pioneer towns like Placerville, Plymouth, Amador City, Sutter Creek, Jackson, Mokelumne Hill, Columbia and Sonora. The towns all preserve historic buildings dating to the 1850s, surrounded by evidence of the old mines, and offer shops, restaurants and hotels/motels for multi-day exploration.

Of many favorites, Sutter Creek stands out with its six block-long historic Main Street, scores of historic buildings, wine-tasting outlets, the Hotel Sutter, Sutter Creek Theatre, Knight’s Foundry and more.

Point Reyes National Seashore

At Point Reyes, north of San Francisco, see elephant seals, tule elk, watch whales, stroll the beach where Sir Francis Drake claimed California for Queen Elizabeth in 1579, tour a spectacular Pacific lighthouse and dine on freshly shucked oysters — all just 2½ hours from Stockton. Tomales Bay and Point Reyes National Seashore offer spectacular California coast; journey farther north to Bodega Bay, Jenner and the Russian River for memorable views and quaint seaside towns.

Big Sur Coast

Big Sur’s Big Creek Bridge, looking north up the Pacific Coast.
Big Sur’s Big Creek Bridge, looking north up the Pacific Coast.

This rugged California coast stretches for 95 miles, from Monterey south to San Simeon. Early Spanish explorers called it “El Sur Grande“ or, the big south, for the miles of uncharted coast line with no real ports and treacherous to both ships and early explorers. Mexico awarded several land grants in the early 1800s; a logging economy begin to thrive by the mid-1800s, with timber from the Santa Lucia Mountains shipped north to San Francisco and south to Los Angeles. Highway 1 was finally completed in 1937, taking 18 difficult years to build the scenic highway.

Campers find secluded campgrounds south down the coast like a necklace like Andrew Molera State Park, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, Limekiln State Park and Kirk Creek Campground. Motel and resort options are plentiful, from expensive to very pricey. Seasonally, elephant seals can be seen at Ano Neuvo State Park (reservations required) and at the six-mile long Piedras Blancas rookery (located just north of San Simeon). Don’t miss San Simeon and Hearst Castle, perched regally in the hills overlooking the ocean, William Randolph Hearst’s huge estate and palatial home of 165 rooms, spectacular grounds and world-class art.

Pinecrest to Kennedy Meadows on Highway 108

All our Sierra highways offer wonderful scenery, from Highway 4 from Bear Valley to Lake Alpine, or Highway 88, with Silver Lake, Stockton Municipal Camp and Kirkwood. But Highway 108 has long been our favorite, with Pinecrest offering the best of high Sierra scenery, swimming and fishing in Pinecrest Lake, hiking, good restaurants and fine lodging.

Just three miles above, Dodge Ridge Ski Resort now offers summer chairlift rides, disc golf and activities in their Creekside Lodge. Another 25 miles up 108 is the lovely Kennedy Meadows area, with hiking, horseback riding and a half dozen Forest Service campgrounds, as well as adventuring into several wilderness areas.

Lassen National Park

Lassen National Park’s Bumpass Hell area features hot pots and steaming fumaroles.
Lassen National Park’s Bumpass Hell area features hot pots and steaming fumaroles.

Boiling hot springs, steaming fumaroles, sulfuric mud pots, multiple volcanic peaks — fire and ice. Located at the south end of the Cascade Mountain Range, it’s part of the “Pacific Ring of Fire," a string of volcanoes surrounding the Pacific Ocean. The visitor center explains the four types of volcanoes found throughout the world, all of which can be found within the park. Those include composite volcanoes (Brokeoff Volcano), plug dome (Mt. Lassen), shield (Prospect Peak) and cinder cone (Cinder Cone). The 32 mile drive through the park includes the Sulfur Works, the Bumpass Hell trail head, the Lassen Peak trailhead (requiring a 2,000-plus foot ascent of the south east side of the peak) and the Devastated Area, which was leveled by the volcanic explosion in 1916, covered with pumice and mudflows and littered with boulders the size of cars blasted off the peak 3 miles away.

East Bay Regional Parks

Greathouse Mine Portal, housing the visitor center at Black Diamond Mines Regional Park.
Greathouse Mine Portal, housing the visitor center at Black Diamond Mines Regional Park.

Long a favorite is the string of parks in the East Bay coastal range, most of them part of East Bay Regional Parks District. Several are favorites, but tops is Black Diamond Mines Regional Park. From the 1850s to early 1900s, the largest coal mining area in California was the Black Diamond Mines District just northeast of Mount Diablo. Four million tons of coal ("black diamonds") were the product of over 900 miners; fueling power plant boilers, Delta steamships, railroad locomotives and warming houses in winter. It's a beautiful regional park featuring the coal mining history, only 45 miles and an hour from Stockton.

Last week we profiled our first seven recommendations, which included Yosemite Park, Calaveras Big Trees, the Eastern Sierra, Lake Tahoe, the San Joaquin/Sacramento River Delta, a San Francisco harbor trip and Shenandoah Valley wine country. What did we miss? Send me an email and we’ll add a couple more!

For more information: Big Sur coast, bigsurcalifornia.org; East Bay Regional Parks, EBParks.org; Highway 49, the Gold Rush Highway, California.com; Lassen Volcanic National Park, nps.gov/lavo; Highway 108, Pinecrest to Kennedy Meadows, visittuolumne.com; Pt. Reyes National Seashore, nps.gov/pore.

Contact Tim, tviall@msn.com; happy travels in scenic California!

This article originally appeared on The Record: Northern California's most beautiful places to visit