adviceBayArea

parks:

skyline road (a road, not a park): beautiful fog! also, a lookout called "cloud's rest" in which, at sunset, you can see the horizon for maybe 180 degrees around you. It's like a rainbow halo.

near skyline:

los trancos: seems more beautiful than monte bello to me. Only had a little bit of time (I had to get back soon), running through it, looking for a good place to see the sunset (didn't find one). Green, not "lush" but lots of green plants surrounding you.

that place in woodside: I forgot the name. goes in between the main road and skyline. lots of redwoods, quiet, big open forest, very contemplative and deep.

monte bello:

Very "california", dry hills with yellow grass-like or grain-like plants. Lots of reptiles running around the path. I walked down to the stream, and then returned. There is a place near the trail that is kind of a marsh choked by reeds. A sign explains that eventually it will be dry land and eventually even turn into a forest.

The first part of the park overlooks a small valley. You can see the fog spilling in at sunset!

rancho san antonio: the "farm" that me and katherine went to. Lots of deer and a pack of turkeys. Different walks with different feels. An area with big trees, a trail at the bottom of hills, a walk over the tops of grassy hills.

find the "midpeninsula regional open space district" http://www.openspace.org/preserves/preserve_locator.html

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> Having never stepped foot in the state, I never really new where the various cities were related to one another.

Here's a summary:

From northmost to southmost:

• Lake Tahoe (very inland/east). Where the skiing is. 4 hrs drive from Stanford.
• Sacramento (less inland/east). The capital. Supposedly an unpleasant place. Farmland. On the way from Stanford to Tahoe.
• San Francisco (coast). Fun place but high rents. ~1hr commute to Stanford. Stuff around it (like Stanford) is called "SF Bay Area". Further north is the redwood forests (they used to here, too, but were cut down). This area is chapparal (deserty) in some places, and cool foresty hills with big trees in others.

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• LA (coast). 1.5-3hrs north of San Diego. Yahoo says it's a 6 hr drive from San Francisco. Supposedly very superficial culture. Supposedly a big urban sprawl.
• San Diego (coast, mexican border). Sort of feels like a big vacation spot. Surfing. Desert, few trees. Large "city" composed of lots of suburbs -- small city center with small buildings.

Other comments on CA:

	Skiing: Ski addicts do exist in the Bay Area and I have a friend whogoes to the Tahoe area almost every weekend during ski season, often on single day trips. So although it seems like a long way to me, to you ski addicts I think the distance is manageable.

Lots of rock climbers, too.

Cars:

	Southern CA town/city layouts force everyone to have a car (or be veryinconvenienced). The roads in CA are bigger and better designed than in the East, with few tolls (although most of CA doesn't have numbered highway exits yet). In the places I've been, traffic on highways is almost nonexistent except at rush hour.

North vs. South and CA culture:

	My impressions aren't that reliable since I'vemostly been with Stanford people (heavy sampling bias).

	In general, what you hear about california culture back east(flakiness, obsession with looks, cars, etc) is really southern california.

	The northern CA people are different,although I guess it is closer to that attitude than elsewhere. Some northern types would be insulted to be lumped in with the southern CA folks. SF has the gay scene, though, and everywhere is liberal politics (the recent Economist article on the California disconnect with Eastern politics is pretty accurate, I'd say, at least on the CA end). Also, attitudes everywhere are colored by the large percentage of immigrants, both mexican and asian. "PC" is the norm, although it is more of a natural social norm (ethnic people out here get personally insulted by some jokes, etc that are more OK in the east) than a politically-imposed one. So the common level of PC-ness isn't as ridiculous and artificial as it is made out to be back east.

On "the asian scene":

	Many young asians in California hangout almost exclusively with other asians. These types were born here, etc, and are real into hip-hop culture. Some of them are "reverse"-racist. The asians who aren't like this (like my girlfriend) suffer from everyone else assuming that they are.

City Names:

	Lots of town names start with "San" or "Santa". So if you move thereyou'd better get used to it and not confuse all the "San"s like I do.

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