{"id":399191,"date":"2026-07-15T10:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T10:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/399191\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T10:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T10:22:10","slug":"they-completed-all-of-l-a-times-101-best-california-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/399191\/","title":{"rendered":"They completed all of L.A. Times’ 101 Best California Experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By December of 2023, Paul Preston realized that his girlfriend Susan Huckle was a big fan of road trips and lists. So for Christmas, he gave her L.A. Times\u2019 \u201d101 Best California Experiences<\/a>\u201d zine<\/a>, a traveler\u2019s bucket list highlighting my top destinations throughout my four decades of traveling the state.<\/p>\n

The gift, I\u2019m delighted to hear, was a hit. <\/p>\n

Preston and Huckle went through it and checked off locations they\u2019d seen already. Then they hit the road.<\/p>\n

And now, after two and a half years of roaming the state between work assignments, they\u2019re back to report that they\u2019ve covered all 101 locations on that list. Though the two have also traveled beyond state lines, the quest to cover California \u201ctotally informed our lives for the last two or three years,\u201d said Huckle, who sent me a note of thanks after ticking the last box.<\/p>\n

After the note arrived, I was eager to call them and learn more. I caught the couple, of course, in the middle of a day trip.<\/p>\n

\"Susan <\/p>\n

Susan Huckle and Paul Preston set out to visit every spot on the L.A. Times\u2019 2023 list of \u201c101 Best California Experiences.\u201d Along the way, they got married in Yosemite Valley.<\/p>\n

(Nick Wuthrich)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re out exploring,\u201d Preston said. \u201cSo you\u2019re getting what we\u2019re about.\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u2019re also now married. That happened last July in Yosemite Valley, which, yes, was on the list.<\/p>\n

Huckle, 41, an actress, a host on \u201cL.A. This Week\u201d on Channel 35, a Universal Studios performer and an author<\/a>, grew up in Santa Maria on California\u2019s Central Coast.<\/p>\n

Preston, 56, is also an actor. He leads movie location tours<\/a> and hosts podcasts, movie trivia nights and special events. He grew up and went to college on the East Coast, so he had fewer California miles under his belt when the couple met in 2020.<\/p>\n

Their California 101 travels began in early 2024 with a trip to Paso Robles, where they saw the green slopes along Highway 46, Morro Rock and the elephant seals at Piedras Blancas near Hearst Castle. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then,\u201d Preston said, \u201cwe just kept going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of their most satisfying stops, the two agreed, were places they hadn\u2019t heard of, such as Orange Works<\/a> in the Central Valley town of Strathmore and Angel Island State Park,<\/a> sometimes known as the Ellis Island of the West. Huckle called Angel Island \u201ca marriage of natural beauty with great, powerful, historic information.\u201d<\/p>\n

By early this year, there were only a few destinations left to check.<\/p>\n

In April, they did the Indian Canyons and Sunnylands estate near Palm Springs, the Integratron near Joshua Tree and the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture in Riverside. In June, they rafted the South Fork of the American River, along with stops in Old Sacramento and, last of all, Columbia State Historic Park. Then they made their own favorites lists.<\/p>\n

Susan Huckle\u2019s top 10:<\/p>\n

Yosemite Valley
Badwater Basin
Mammoth Mountain
Angel Island State Park
Cheech Marin Center
Joshua Tree National Park
American River South Fork
The Marshall Store on Tomales Bay
Santa Cruz Island
Sunnylands <\/p>\n

Paul Preston\u2019s top 10:<\/p>\n

Yosemite Valley
Hollywood Bowl
Griffith Observatory
Catalina
Mammoth Mountain
American River South Fork
Erick Schats\u2019 Bakery in Bishop
Huntington Library and Gardens
Palm Springs Aerial Tramway
Balboa Park, San Diego<\/p>\n

Now that they\u2019ve seen so much of the state, I had questions. For one, which spots not on the list would they have included? <\/p>\n

Alcatraz<\/a>, they agreed. Also, as an admirer of redwoods, Preston liked Calaveras Big Trees State Park<\/a>. As an avid cyclist, Huckle liked the 22-mile Marvin Braude Bike Trail <\/a>from Torrance to Pacific Palisades.<\/p>\n

And was anything on the list a disappointment?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Carmel Mission,\u201d Huckle said quickly. \u201cIt\u2019s beautiful and the missions are an important part of California history.\u201d But she said the mission\u2019s account of its own history seemed \u201cwhitewashed,\u201d saying little <\/a>about the Native loss and trauma<\/a> that historians are increasingly recognizing in accounts of the missions.<\/p>\n

Said Huckle: \u201cI was like, \u2018C\u2019mon guys, nobody really thinks this any more, right?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that they\u2019re done with the Times\u2019 \u201c101 Best California Experiences,\u201d what what will shape their next trips?<\/p>\n

They have a list for that. Huckle picked up an L.A. guide, Danny Jensen\u2019s \u201cSecret Los Angeles<\/a>,\u201d and the couple plans to start where the book does, with the Triforium, a many-colored sculpture that went up outside City Hall in 1975 (and once featured music). <\/p>\n

After that? Maybe the Faces of Elysian Valley<\/a>, a traffic circle sculpture that Huckle said \u201clooks like Easter Island in the middle of Cypress Park.\u201d<\/p>\n

That will leave only about 138 more destinations in the book to cover. <\/p>\n

If anybody can do it, it\u2019s these two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By December of 2023, Paul Preston realized that his girlfriend Susan Huckle was a big fan of road…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[18155,160270,7,9,8,160269,2798,60013,160271,29458,6227,160267,24819,3164,23178,160268,225],"class_list":["post-399191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-angel-island-state-park","tag-best-california-experiences","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-carmel-mission","tag-couple","tag-day-trip","tag-girlfriend-susan-huckle","tag-half-year","tag-host","tag-huckle","tag-l-a-times","tag-list","tag-note","tag-paul-preston","tag-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}