Looking for a free place to live? Try Slab City, 1,000 acres/405 hectares of Southern California desert near the town of Niland. Though owned by the U.S. government, the site is home to approximately 3,000 people who live in trailers, RVs and converted buses. The settlement has existed since the 1950s, when the first arrivals set up housekeeping on the bare foundations (slabs) of former military barracks.
Don't think that all California wine is made in the northern part of the state: There are quality wineries near Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles.
Southern California is often associated with films and rock music, but it has also been a hotbed for country music. Bakersfield, in particular, became famous for launching the careers of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, and for the twangy electric guitars of the Bakersfield Sound.
Do be on the lookout for whales in the water if you're driving coastal Highway 1 December-February. They're migrating south during that time, close enough to shore to be seen. Just about any time of year, you can also spot dolphins, sea lions, seals and sea otters near shore.
San Luis Obispo was the birthplace of the motel. The Milestone Motel, designed by architect Arthur Heineman, opened there in 1925.
Fort Tejon State Historic Park, near Lebec (north of Los Angeles), was the western terminus for the U.S. Camel Corps. It was an Army experiment where camels carried supplies from San Antonio, Texas, to California across the desert.
California is the epicenter for inventions as diverse as the Frisbee, the laser, the first 360-degree looping roller coaster, the vacuum tube, the egg incubator, the first digital (virtual reality) theme park, the television, the first radio broadcast, the freeway, the gas station, the seedless watermelon, the fortune cookie, the enclosed shopping mall and the Barbie doll.
The town of Zzyzx (pronounced ZY-zix) was founded by Curtis Howe Springer, a squatter who built a health spa, castle and radio station on government land in the Mojave Desert (you can see the turnoff for it on Interstate 15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas). He used the site to preach his peculiar brand of gospel and to sell miracle cures.
The highest temperature ever recorded in North America was 134 F/57 C degrees in 1913 in Death Valley.
Nine counties in California supply all the artichokes in the U.S. The annual Castroville Artichoke Festival's first Artichoke Queen (in 1947) was the then unknown actress Marilyn Monroe.
People looking for the perfect climate might try Eureka. The highest temperature ever recorded is 78 F/26 C, and the mercury drops below freezing maybe once a year.
If you are interested in visiting some of California's more fascinating missions, don't miss San Juan Bautista (in San Juan Bautista), Mission San Jose (in Fremont) and Mission Santa Clara (in Santa Clara).
The oldest living things in the world, the bristlecone pine trees, grow at an altitude of 11,000 ft/3,350 m in California and Nevada. Some are estimated to be nearly 5,000 years old. The largest living things in the world are the coast redwoods, also known as California redwoods, which frequently top 300 ft/93 m tall.
