Top 15 California destinations

Caption Top places to see in California

Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times

There's no place like home. So explore California like a native. Here's our checklist of not-so-obvious but oh-so-essential sites. But tell us -- are we nuts? Today, with full expectation of howling dissent and snorts of derision, we present the Travel section's first California Golden 15. We, your neighbors, do so as the holiday travel season approaches and as distant strangers peddle their compendiums of places you should visit before you die. These are 15 places we think you must visit to grasp the wonder of this state, including Joshua Tree National Park, shown here. This is not California for beginners -- not Disneyland, not Hearst Castle, not the San Diego Zoo, not even Sutter's Mill. This is the California that speaks to the seasoned native and the thoughtful newcomer, the California that waits beyond the well-explored city limits of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. (Don't get worked up about the numbers; the list of destinations is random, not by ranking.)

-- Christopher Reynolds

There's no place like home. So explore California like a native. Here's our checklist of not-so-obvious but oh-so-essential sites. But tell us -- are we nuts? Today, with full expectation of howling dissent and snorts of derision, we present the Travel section's first California Golden 15. We, your neighbors, do so as the holiday travel season approaches and as distant strangers peddle their compendiums of places you should visit before you die. These are 15 places we think you must visit to grasp the wonder of this state, including Joshua Tree National Park, shown here. This is not California for beginners -- not Disneyland, not Hearst Castle, not the San Diego Zoo, not even Sutter's Mill. This is the California that speaks to the seasoned native and the thoughtful newcomer, the California that waits beyond the well-explored city limits of Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. (Don't get worked up about the numbers; the list of destinations is random, not by ranking.)

National Steinbeck Center

Unlike museums devoted to sports legends or war heroes, a museum that honors a man of arts and letters must reflect his quiet, solitary pursuit. Which is to say that such a repository may be unbearably dull. How delightful, then, is the National Steinbeck Center at the end of Salinas' Main Street, a place whose undercurrents deliver shock after tiny shock--here an arc of unknown history, there a jolt of social commentary. The museum is just a couple of blocks from where townspeople burned Steinbeck's books, enraged at his perceived betrayal of them and agriculture. The modern-looking center may seem incongruous with the unpretentious persona of the author, whose work won Pulitzer and Nobel prizes. But like his books, it shines a light on the issues, using film clips and displays that are muted set pieces, occasionally somber but never dull. To see this place and the fields that surround Salinas is to understand that Steinbeck's so-called Valley of the World is really the Heart of California.