Tell Us About Your Best California Road Trip

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/us/california-road-trips-summer.html

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Californians love the open road, and there’s no time like the summer for a drive around the Golden State.

I’ve done my share: solo trips from my parents’ house in south Orange County to Berkeley with nary an auxiliary cord and only a disgusting energy drink for company.

There was the time I got caught in a snowstorm on the way to Lake Tahoe, the drive spent clutching the wheel as I rolled through highways outside Sacramento blanketed by mist. Another trip, a friend and I accidentally took a very long route from Bakersfield to Pismo Beach.

But while I consider myself something of a California road warrior, I am not — at least, not yet — a California road trip aficionado.

So, since it’s now summer, and since we recently introduced a playlist that would be useful for just such an occasion, we want to hear about your best California road trips.

Where did you start and where did you end up? Did you have any great meals along the way? Know a scenic route that isn’t overrun with traffic — and would you be kind enough to share? Email us at catoday@nytimes.com.

We’ll select a few over the summer, and build out itineraries based on your suggestions and a little of our own research. Then we’ll tell you about them and I will hit the road based on your suggestions.

If you need some inspiration, read about a long, winding drive down Highway 1 — the Alpha and Omega of California road trips, with stops at Duarte’s, a tavern in Pescadero that’s more than a century old, and at Esalen, the picturesque coastal retreat that seemed to be the inspiration for Don Draper’s last big idea.

Or maybe the desert is more your speed, where you can drive into the horizon and immerse yourself in deafening silence. For you, here’s an itinerary for a drive to Death Valley. (It’s great if you’re on a budget.)

Or perhaps your family makes pilgrimages to historic sites, like an annual bus trip to Manzanar, where thousands of Japanese-Americans were incarcerated during World War II.

We know there are countless roads worth traveling in the Golden State, and no one knows them like you.

(We often link to sites that limit access for nonsubscribers. We appreciate your reading Times coverage, but we also encourage you to support local news if you can.)

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• Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a plan to put aside $21 billion in investor and ratepayer money for wildfire damage claims as part of efforts to balance consumers’ and utilities’ interests as the state prepares for grueling fire seasons to come. The proposal is getting mixed reviews. [The New York Times]

• It’s 1:21 a.m. at the Pittsburg/Bay Point BART station, time for an end-of-the line sweep and the beginning of a nightly cycle for the growing number of homeless people who must find somewhere else to go. [The San Francisco Chronicle]

• Even after officials imposed more aggressive controls on racing and after a rebuke from Governor Newsom, a 30th horse died at Santa Anita Park. The park’s owners banned the horse’s trainer. [The New York Times]

• Many of the roughly 1,500 mostly Latino, lower-wage workers caring for the horses behind the scenes at Santa Anita say they fear for their jobs. The powerful, they say, have been talking right past them. [The Los Angeles Times]

• “It’s been complete radio silence.” Remaining staff members are confused and frustrated by decisions to lay off some longtime editors and move printing operations out of town, as The Bakersfield Californian, a newspaper that serves a geographically vast and fast-growing Kern County population, moves into new hands. [KBAK]

• A group of high-profile artists is suing over the 2008 Universal Music Fire, which destroyed thousands of original recordings. (Read more about how The Times uncovered the breadth of the loss.) [The New York Times]

• Why are whales dying at an alarming rate? Scientists in Monterey wrote about the kind of urgent detective work they’re doing to figure it out. [New York Times Opinion]

• Amid a population boom sustained in part by migrants from California, the consolidation of what was once public land by super rich private owners is causing anxiety in states like Idaho. [The New York Times]

• New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that Asians now make up the largest share of Alameda County’s population, joining Santa Clara County. The Bay has some of the nation’s most diverse counties, an expert said, but they’re still segregated. [East Bay Times]

• What if your neighbor could give you a parking ticket? Washington, D.C. is looking into it, but in Malibu, it’s already a reality. [The New York Times]

• Huntington Park has a real-life robocop. (It’s not very menacing, though.) [CBS Los Angeles]

If all this talk about road trips has you dreaming of replacing your gas guzzler with an electric vehicle, here’s a stat to chew on: Eight hours of driving and five hours of charging.

That’s the breakdown of a 540-mile round trip from L.A. to Las Vegas in a Chevy Bolt, my colleague Ivan Penn reported.

He wanted to get a sense of how viable it really is for drivers to switch to electric cars — where they could find places to plug in and how it might alter their habits. So he made the trek himself, along with a rep for a company that’s building fast-charging stations around the country.

The time spent waiting for their car to juice up meant some forced tourism at Whiskey Pete’s Casino at the Nevada-California border, and at the Baker thermometer, he wrote.

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Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, went to school at U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter, @jillcowan.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.