Weekend escapes: Quick getaways close to Southern California

This year Amador County celebrates the 150th year since the planting of the Original Grandpere Zinfandel vineyard in the Sierra foothills southeast of Sacramento.

My family’s getaway late last year to Oregon’s stormy coast was invigorating.

A century before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, America was abuzz with news of the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, an equally momentous feat for that era.

Can something feel very hot and very cold at the same time?

Vancouver, Canada, teems with tourists in the summer, including many who come here to board Alaskan cruises.

Beyond the strip malls and waterfront mansions lies an Orange County that seems concerned about neither of those things.

The saguaro, with towering trunks and branches studded with spines, is synonymous with the American Southwest.

A week on a tropical island wasn’t in the cards for my family last spring, so we did the next best thing: drove 20 minutes from our Mill Valley home to the town of Tiburon for an overnight bayside fix.

Camping has never been my thing.

“Are you going to Indian Wells?”

In some ghost towns, you have to rev up your imagination to picture what life was like in the old days.

These days Seattle is a high-tech boomtown, but I grew up in the Emerald City long before Amazon, Starbucks and Microsoft made it so.

The city of Alameda, in the San Francisco Bay Area, is adjacent to Oakland — but it’s a world apart.

Death Valley is less than a five-hour drive from Los Angeles, but it is as desolate as a planet in a galaxy far, far away.

Below are our editors’ 10 favorite Weekend Escapes from 2018, an intentionally subjective selection intended to capture the range of travel options at our doorsteps.

I felt as though I were climbing into a mummy’s sarcophagus as I settled into the empty concrete tub, but I figured that if Mark Twain could do it, so could I: take the waters at Vichy Springs near Ukiah, Calif.

I came to Colorado Springs in search of echoes of Katharine Lee Bates, who, 125 years ago, wrote a poem there that became “America the Beautiful.”

Coronado, with its beautiful beaches and delightful village center, is a fine spot to spend a weekend almost any time of the year, but my husband and I chose fall when the air is a bit crisper and the crowds a bit sparser.

Once famed for its citrus groves, Riverside today is best known for its Festival of Lights.

¡Salud!

You’ll wind up in Mexico if you miss the turnoff on Arizona 286 to Rancho de la Osa.

I have visited Sausalito many times but somehow never spent any time in neighboring Mill Valley, nestled in Marin County at the foot of Mt.

I’ve kicked around quaint, dusty Santa Margarita off and on for years.

Since the 1950s the Skyview Motel in Los Alamos has been a quick overnight stop for travelers making the L.A.

La Jolla Village, sometimes called the Beverly Hills of San Diego, is the ideal setting for a big-splurge fall weekend.

“Do I pack golf shoes or snow gear?” my wife, Terri, asked. “Yes,” I replied.

Our grandsons, ages 4 and 7, live and breathe Legos, so they rejoiced when I booked a hotel and admissions package at Legoland in Carlsbad, Calif.

My husband, Paul, and I discovered marvelous Markleeville thanks to a mudslide in May, which prompted a detour that opened our eyes to a spectacular slice of California.

Looking for a weekend escape before summer escapes?

San Pedro, with its steep hills and panoramic ocean views, reminds me of San Francisco, one of my favorite cities.

My husband, Paul, likes to fish; I like trees.

By design or default, Cayucos has remained an unfussy little beach community sitting quietly off Highway 1 on California’s scenic Central Coast.

When I asked my Las Vegas friend Marian how she survived her city’s beastly summer heat, she had two words for me: Mt.

Gray skies kept me out of the surf on a recent visit to Laguna Beach, but I found plenty to enjoy on dry land.

As a dedicated Dodger fan and lover of baseball, I’m good for about 200 games a year, in person or on TV.

San Diego’s Pacific Beach has a split personality.

Livermore will keep the light on for you.

As my 14-year-old son, Anders, scampered up a metal ladder to the gun emplacements at Ft.

“This is just like Tatooine!”

If you have never heard of Nevada’s Great Basin National Park, that’s understandable.

When my wife, Jeannie, was a girl, she and her father spent every summer in Mammoth Lakes.

Healdsburg is nearly everyone’s idea of a trendy Sonoma County destination.

I had a hankering to drive by the Whispering Winds Ranch in Creston, Calif., where I had lived for a year in the early 1980s.

It seemed like a tall order: My wife and I had a four-day window we wanted to fill with history, hiking, good eats, an interesting hotel and pleasant weather.

Ever wondered what it’s like to sleep in a fire lookout tower?

Sonora is a launching point for the great outdoors: Yosemite National Park and the Sierra are nearby.

The last time I visited the Grand Canyon, I was a teenager … eons ago.

Carpinteria loves to call itself the “home of the world’s safest beach” and although that may be true, my wife and I discovered that Carpinteria, on a blustery spring day, had much more to offer than choppy surf and blowing sand.

It was August, and we were visiting relatives in Phoenix. And it was hot. Really hot.

Weekends are precious — hey, there are generally only 52 of them each year.