#california-poppy-fields

#california-poppy-fields

Breckenridge will host its first-ever Wildflower Week from July 2 to July 12, celebrating the arrival of colorful blooms in the mountain meadows. The event will include a farmer's market, live music, and kids' crafts, along with wildflower hikes led by naturalists and floral cocktail classes.

Moving around in nature tends to correlate with lower levels of stress. You're not only moving around, but you're listening; you're noticing signs of birds, you're enhancing your cognitive flexibility.

The transformation of Pacheco Marsh from a scarred dumping ground into a pristine wetland represents a significant achievement in environmental restoration, showcasing the potential for nature to reclaim industrial sites.

"It was so emotional and meaningful for everybody. [There] was like an excitement. But it was also super sorrowful at the same time," said Best.

Researchers have known since at least 2008 that wildfires can create chromium-6, but a new study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology in November, is the first to report details such as how long it might persist in groundwater.

"The most successful wildlife trips follow animal patterns and seasonality," says Condé Nast Traveler Top Travel Specialist Josh Geller of Embark Beyond.

Sol Botanica is HUNT & GATHER'S new home for gathering, where nature-forward drinks and seasonal small plates meet local art, celebrating the beauty of community.

These are Scilla sardensis, the common name is Glory-of-the-Snow. They are native to the mountains of Western Turkey but are really comfortable growing in almost any condition, as you can see. They are, for us, the real harbingers of spring. We know that once we start to see this electric blue color, the season is starting for us.

Before state Route 62 was built, there was seamless 95-mile-long habitat connectivity between the San Bernardino and Little San Bernardino mountain ranges, extending from the I-10 south of Joshua Tree National Park to the I-15 near the Cajon Pass. Now, plans for two new wildlife crossings across the highway aim to bring back some of that connectivity, while potentially saving a local population on the brink of extinction in the process.

Southern California, especially Los Angeles, has many breathtaking botanical gardens and wildflower-lined hiking trails. But it's also exciting to visit private home gardens that are rarely open to the public and find inspiration even if you don't have space for a garden at home.

The nine national parks in the Golden State - including Yosemite, Death Valley and Joshua Tree - attracted nearly 12 million recreational visits in 2025, according to statistics from the National Park Service. That's up more than 800,000 visits from 2024 and up more than 300,000 from the previous record set in 2019, according to the data, which stretches back to 1979.

The Eaton Fire was merciless when it came to Altadena's celebrated green spaces, destroying or damaging most of the leafy trees that lined the streets in many neighborhoods. Local advocates are scrambling to restore what was lost and save what's still standing.

Get up early to drive into the hills and park in the main lot, which opens 30 minutes before sunrise. This will leave you with enough time to make your way to the peak through the wildflower-scattered trails and watch the sunrise over the Bay.

Formal groundbreaking for the Ahmanson Ranch project, a town-style development on 2,800 acres in the Simi Hills in southeastern Ventura County, will not take place until 2001. However, the project has already achieved historic status for the size of the private-to-public land transfer it produced and for reviving a design concept that marks a major departure from the car-dependent suburban enclave typical of the postwar era.

For 2025, there was good news and bad news: overall, these areas were visited 323 million times over the course of the year. That's the good news; the bad news is that this figure was down ever so slightly - specifically, 2.7% - from a record-setting 2024.

Named after the legendary Big Sur female pioneer and rancher, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park stands out even among the rest of the region's attractions. The park features stands of centuries-old redwood trees and provides a haven for a variety of California wildlife, though it's best known for the 80-foot-high McWay Falls, an impressive cascade that drops directly from a sheer cliff to the sandy beach below.

As a SoCal resident, I visit Anza-Borrego at least once a year to explore the sandstone Slot canyon and surrounding desert, keeping an eye out for animals like chuckwalla lizards and bighorn sheep. Despite its incredibly dry environment (the park averages just four to eight inches of rain a year, and summertime temps routinely hit the hundreds), Anza-Borrego teems with life and opportunities to explore one of the nation's most unique ecosystems.

For the last decade, wildlife biologists have been using remote camera and scat surveys to track the movements of the fox in the southern Sierra. For the last three years, they have been carrying out intensive trapping efforts. But the fox has proved stubbornly difficult to capture. The speedy and delicate species is extremely wary of humans. The few remaining individuals live in barren, rugged terrain at high elevations.

A long, winding path takes guests around and under felled trees. Aged gray tree hunks form arches, for instance, over bridges that tower over clay-colored paths with hoof prints. The design is meant to reorient us, to take us on a trail walked not by humans but traversed and carved by elephants, a creature still misunderstood, vilified and hunted for its cataclysmic-like ability to reshape land, and sometimes communities.