Other states may have high mountains, vast deserts and scenic shorelines. California? It has a park system that contains all of it. Ancient redwoods grow along the mist-covered edge of the continent.
The alpine beauty of the Sierra Nevada towers above Emerald Bay and Sugar Pine Point state parks on the shores of world-famous Lake Tahoe. Thirty warm, sandy state beaches from San Diego to Santa Barbara beckon visitors from across the Southland and around the world. The California state parks system — widely regarded as the nation’s finest — showcases a fabulous array of nature’s handiwork: giant sequoias in Calaveras Big Trees State Park; the rare Torrey Pines making a last stand in a natural reserve near San Diego; palm oases in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park; some of the tallest trees on Earth in Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park.
This multitude of intriguing environments, and the many fine paths that explore them, add up to some world-class hiking adventures. I confess to being more than a little obsessed by California state parks and am likely the only one crazy enough to have hiked and written about all 280 of them . I love sharing my passion for them, but it’s often challenging to do because of the public’s poor name recognition of the parks.
Over the last couple decades, I’ve asked several thousand Californians to “name five California State parks” and less than 5% can do so. Surprising to me, many of these baffled respondents are outdoorsy Californians.
