Death Valley called to me again yesterday. I made my first ever trip to Death Valley National Park just two weeks ago. The mountains and valley did not have much appeal for me on a mostly cloudy, mostly 103 F degree day. My initial impression of Death Valley was a place with an abundance of mountain rocks, dust, hot wind and little unique beauty not seen in countless other locations of the Mojave Desert, like driving Interstate 15 to Las Vegas.

Furnace Creek Inn and Scotty’s Castle are attractive oases with captivating architecture, but that should not be the highlight of a National Park.

My four hour drive through Death Valley yesterday, arriving in the afternoon and leaving at sunset revealed much more of the park’s inspiration, majesty and wildlife to me.

Heading North

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Capitola on the north side of Monterey Bay is where I started this Memorial Day three-day weekend. The little town of 10,000 just east of Santa Cruz is filled with small boutique shops, small independent hotels and cottages and quintessential California beach kids running around with surfboards and skateboards.

Yesterday the town looked like a place run by children and teens as a 3-day long holiday weekend looked like everyday fun in the sun beach action for locals. Read More…

Something called me to Death Valley last week.  An irrational idea came to me that I could pass through Death Valley unaffected by the desolation and mid-May heat. But it didn’t turn out that way.

California Highway 190 and 30 miles to Furnace Creek, Death Valley.

A detour in life took me to a place where I was hanging out at a hotel in a desert oasis during the middle of the day, literally with no other people to be seen during the time I was there. The Twilight Zone experience at the historic 1927 Furnace Creek Inn, Death Valley, California was my California adventure ride. Read More…

Yosemite Valley is a lush garden space of meadows, woods and the Merced River flowing between high, massive granite cliffs like Cathedral Rocks, El Capitan and Half Dome.

Tunnel View parking lot is one of the most popular photography spots for views of Yosemite Valley.

Turkey vulture welcomed me to Yosemite Valley after hours in the high Sierra of Tioga Road where I was watched over by Raven, my guide animal for Utah and Death Valley. Seriously, ravens were the dominant wildlife feature in all the National Parks I visited. Turkey vultures are the birds I encounter commonly when hiking the Monterey County coastline of Big Sur. Read More…

East to west California Highway 120 travels up the steepest gradient of road in the first ten miles gaining 3,000 feet in elevation from U.S. 395 at Mono Lake at around 7,000 feet to the Tioga Pass gate for Yosemite National Park at 9,945 feet. Tioga Pass Road is the highest road of the highway passes across the Sierra Nevada. Read More…

Spending the night at 9,000 feet in elevation at the Mammoth Mountain ski resort reminded me of the time I stayed in Quito, Ecuador (9,350 feet). I walked around Quito feeling naturally high with dreamy thoughts floating around my head and big picture ideas jotted down in my journals. I bought a painting in Quito of a locomotive train floating in the sky above the mountains and city. That painting symbolizes the bizarre state of mind I felt living high up in thin air.

I woke up yesterday in Mammoth with stream of consciousness thoughts, wrote an ADD structured blog post and then apprehensively went to see if a bear or woolly mammoth had ransacked my car where I had left three day old chicken from Colorado sitting in the dry ice chest. Even the bears did not desire that buffalo sauce chicken from Beaver Creek. Read More…

The Santa Monica Mountains are the dominant feature of Pacific Coast Highway on the 50 miles from Oxnard to Santa Monica. The crumbling coast ridge of mountains comes right to the sea and the road winds along the rock faces for this stretch with Malibu houses and estates sprinkled around like large boulders on loose soil waiting to be washed or shaken into the sea.

A few roads turn inland from Highway 1 into rugged canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains with place names like Point Magu and Mulholland Highway and Topanga Canyon.

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Oxnard is one of California’s cities that blows me away when I see the population listed as over 200,000 residents. This city has probably had one of the largest increases in population among California cities during my lifetime.

I do not know much about Oxnard except that it is where Highway 1, Pacific Coast Highway reappears as a separate route from Highway 101 following the coastline south along the Santa Monica Mountains and Malibu to Santa Monica.

And there are a large number of Mexican restaurants.

Oxnard is about 50 miles south of Santa Barbara. The hotels in Santa Barbara are expensive relative to Ventura and Oxnard. Ventura can be a cheap place to stay on weekdays, but weekend rates climb. The high rates on weekends in Ventura make Four Points Ventura Harbor one of my favorite places to stay when the cost is 3,000 Starpoints per night.

Traveling south from Oxnard is basically the Los Angeles metropolitan area either traveling 101 inland through the San Fernando Valley to LA or Highway 1 along the coast to Santa Monica and LA.

Residence Inn Oxnard River Ridge offered a convenient stop  last Tuesday at an affordable price ($109) with the benefit of earning a free night certificate with my second stay for Marriott Rewards MegaBonus (Feb 1-April 30, 2013 promotion).

My two free nights from last week’s stays already posted to my account. Read More…

Pinnacles National Park is 60 miles southeast of where I live in Monterey, California. Pinnacles refer to the massive rock spires and crags dotting the landscape of the park in the Gabilan Range.

This is condor bird country and there are talus caves; large boulder ceiling caves in narrow canyons filled with bat colonies of many different species.

Pinnacles National Park, California.

The Gabilan mountains are a range of hills and small mountains, 1,000 to 3,455 feet in elevation, stretching about eighty miles along the eastern side of the Salinas Valley of central coast California. The rock formations in the Pinnacles are the remnants of an ancient volcano field that shifted north over millions of years from the other portion of the volcano field located about 200 miles south on the eastern side of the San Andreas fault. The similarities found between rocks in these two locations hundreds of miles apart along the San Andreas fault in California helped establish plate tectonics theory. Read More…

A mountain resort hotel in southern California has joined Marriott Autograph Collection properties. Lake Arrowhead Resort & Spa is located at an elevation of 5,100 feet in the San Bernadino Mountains about 100 miles east of LAX. This area is a mountain getaway resort within two hours drive of the beaches of Santa Monica and Venice.

Lake Arrowhead Resort originally opened in 1923. Scenes from some Hollywood movies have been filmed at the hotel. The resort has undergone a $26 million restoration of 162 guest rooms, 11 suites and the Spa of the Pines. Dining includes BIN189 for lakeside fine dining and Mountain Aroma’s coffee bar and pastries.

LAResort.com homepage.

Lake Arrowhead Resort Marriott Autograph Collection homepage.

This property enters Marriott Rewards as a category 6 award night at 30,000 points per night or 120,000 points for a 5-night stay.

Marriott websites already allow reservations for Lake Arrowhead Resort. I checked a sample midweek (cheaper rates) Tuesday and Wednesday night stay for May 14-16, 2013.

King Lake view room + 1,000 Marriott Rewards bonus points = $178.00 per night. 2-night stay = $463.72 after tax and resort fee.

There is a $20 resort fee at Lake Arrowhead Resort that includes wifi and parking.

An even better rate for a King Bed, Lake View room is AAA rate including breakfast for $188.10. A 2-night stay after tax and resort fees = $485.33. Breakfast at the hotel for an additional $12 is a great added value.

If you are willing to forego the Lake View, then AAA will get you into the hotel with a mountain view room for as low as $153 per night. This works out to $205.11 per night after tax and resort fee = $410.22 all-in for two night stay.

Lake Arrowhead, California, Google Maps

The Autograph Collection Hotels of Marriott are unique independent hotels signing on with Marriott Rewards for marketing and brand identity. There are currently 42 Autograph Collection Hotels with 15 of these hotels located outside the USA.

Hotel Adagio (1929) near Union Square, San Francisco and The Hotel Blackhawk (1910) Davenport, Iowa are two other recent additions to Marriott Autograph Collection.