Lonely Planet Road Trip: California Highway 1

From Roadtrip America

 

"The first thing you will notice when you pick up a copy of Lonely Planet Road Trip: California Highway 1 is its diminutive size. Don't be fooled! There is a wealth of road trip information inside this 4"x 8" booklet, and it's the perfect size for your glove box or even your back pocket as you stroll the beach towns profiled inside. Paige Penland did an especially thorough job of identifying and evaluating eating and recreational business establishments along the 625 miles between Leggett and Dana Point on California Highway One. There's stuff in this book you won't find anywhere else.

 

Most of us don't normally read guide books cover-to-cover, but the author's sense of humor and derring-do approach as she conveys insider tips about this journey may well lead you to read it in a single sitting as I did. The book includes nine fold-out maps that are well designed and incorporated into the front and back covers of the book. It's possible to find all of the attractions she describes in the book with no other maps.

 

The book features twenty-two towns and cities along the route, and the author includes tips for finding superb scenery, attractions, unusual restaurants, sleeping options, and information about some of the scenic destinations between the larger towns. I have been to many of the places she describes, and her recommendations match well with my own experiences in those locales.

 

In this book you will discover the location of the top nine nude beaches, the single best park bench, and the author's choices for the best places to harvest strawberries, apples, and mushrooms. Penland also looks for and shares some great bargains including San Francisco's "Pluto's Fresh Food for a Hungry Universe," where organic salads and classic meat-and-potatoes meals range from $3 to $7. There are a number of suggested side trips, including one to the Santa Lucia hot springs where guests can stay overnight in yurts at a Soto Zen monastery. She also shares tips about a street-side kiosk in Santa Monica where you can get free tickets to watch TV shows being filmed. The book provides information about choosing destinations that appeal to children and detailed information about hiking and exploring many of the county and state parks along the route.

 

Since road trips are often not prepackaged, totally planned excursions, the author does a good job of detailing some of the challenges that road trippers may face following this route. The experience of traveling California's Highway One is something everyone should aspire to—this book will help make such a journey a real adventure.

 

 

Lowrider: History, Pride, Culture

From Custom Auto magazine

 

Now, you may have thought that the lowrider phenomenon is a relatively recent development, but in actual fact it traces its roots way back to the thirties. It’s an all-American thing, and within that, traditionally a Hispanic thing, and a West Coast thing, too. Like so many California trends it’s spread all over the globe, and there are now lowriders everywhere from San Jose to Sandwich, Kent.

 

Paige has decided not to concentrate on the cars alone, as to mistake lowriding for just a style of car is to totally misunderstand the whole concept of lowriding. To parrot a much clichéd phrase, “These ain’t cars, they’re a whole lifestyle.” Yessir, with their own unique culture, costume, language, set of codes and rules.

 

Instead, Paige provides an almost anthropological look at the background and history of lowriding, with interviews with Cesar Chavez, the godfather of lowriding, and plenty of interesting archive pictures and materials from lowriding’s earliest days.

 

The fact is that, like it or not, the Hispanic community, even in oh-so-Hispanic California, has always been on the periphery of the American dream enjoyed by most white, middle-class Americans. To this day in California many of the blue-collar jobs such as picking oranges or janitorial work are carried out by illegal Mexican immigrants or very badly paid Hispanic Californians. Ironically, their vital contribution is central to California’s great wealth, and without them California could not function as the fifth-largest economy in the world.

 

What’s all this got to do with lowriding? Well, lowriders and associated cultures of music, clothes and more sinister, gangs, have provided generations of disenfranchised Hispanic Americans with an identity and an outlet that is totally theirs…something of which to be proud and something which is unique. As the title of the books says, lowriding is all about history, pride and culture.

 

OK, don’t blank out and think, “Oh no, I don’t want to read some sort of social treatise on the plight of Hispanic society and culture in modern-day America.” There are lots of great shots of lowriders throughout this wonderfully illustrated, 158-page, full-colour hardback, however it’s important to understand that lowriding is more than just slammed cars with fancy hydraulics, eye-searing paint jobs and impossibly elaborate interiors. This book makes that clear, and to the uninitiated opens up a whole new side to lowriding that they never even knew existed. So, cholos and pachucos, make sure you get your mitts on this if you want the full low-down on lowriders and the associated culture.

 

 

Lonely Planet Costa Rica 6

Five stars from amazon.com

 

Great Guide; Excellent vacation, October 20, 2001
I ended up a few weeks and travelling through parts of Central America. This travel guide is one of the ones I took with me, and I highly recommend it.

 

This guide proved to be invaluable, and saved me a lot of headaches and money. Traveling solo, I rarely make reservations or plans until I actually get there. This is what I did when I got to Costa Rica.

 

Thanks to this LP guide I can report the following highlights: $7 per night hotel room in San Jose, watching a live volcano (Arenal), spending time in the hot springs at the base of a live volcano, visiting a coffee plantation, hiking through Cloud Forest, and seeing several breathtaking waterfalls. Travelling through Nicaragua to Tortugero to watch the endangered turtles lay eggs was definitely a worthwhile adventure.

 

A few words of advice: If you are going to visit the rain forest, bring a poncho. It rains in the rain forest. A lot, especially during the rainy season. Perhaps that is why they call it a rain forest. Secondly, visit the local tourist offices in San Jose. I went in looking for some free maps, and got a lot of good advice. It never hurts to have some extra advice about where to go to supplement the guide.

 

A little dense, it becomes hard to visualize places when planning a trip, but the real value is when you are the ground and moving. Highly recommended.