Where to Find California’s Most Inspiring Landscapes

Californians always seem to be at the forefront of something interesting. From Hollywood’s hallowed film houses and the Silicon Valley garage that changed history to Big Sur’s bohemian haunts, the same epic natural landscapes and dynamic urban communities of the Golden State that continue to inspire dreamers also make it a rewarding travel destination.

With the help of three particularly creative Californians—architect Barbara Bestor, artist and author Obi Kaufmann, and landscape architect Roderick Wyllie—who were each recently highlighted in episodes of Unpacked by Afar, we’ll explore here what makes the state so inspirational and where you might go to mine a bit of that creativity for yourself.

Visit Los Angeles design museums

Courtesy of Lauren Manning/Flickr

California’s renowned museums can shed insight into the roots of ideas born here that helped shape modern history as we know it and give you a deeper sense of place. In Los Angeles, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures—housed in a historic Streamline Moderne building dating to 1939—is one of many places to learn about what’s perhaps California’s most famous export.

Los Angeles was also instrumental in the rise of one of the most important movements in design history, modernism. You can learn about that highly influential period in several ways, including a visit to the Eames House, the longtime home of Charles and Ray Eames that’s now a museum. Tour the boldly designed Pacific Palisades home up close while learning more about the lives of the style pioneers.

While there, head to nearby West Hollywood, home to the MAK Center for Art and Architecture. It continues this tradition of experimental living, hosting rolling exhibitions and artists- and architects-in-residence in three landmark buildings designed by the legendary Rudolph M. Schindler.

Check out technology and culture at Silicon Valley museums

Silicon Valley has been transforming the world for decades, and in Palo Alto, you can discover where it all began with a visit to the HP Garage. Viewable by appointment only, the historic site shows off the technological experimentation that Lucille and David Packard began conducting there in 1939.

Nearby in Mountain View—one of the birthplaces of the first silicon semiconductors and home to many of the world’s largest tech companies—the Computer History Museum offers a broader view of this history. Its rolling exhibitions complement the one-of-a-kind treasures in its permanent collection.

Stay among the literary legacy of Big Sur

Courtesy of Visit California/Max Whittaker

Beyond its legacy of innovation, California has long attracted some of the country’s most esteemed artists. Just two hours south of Mountain View, an enduring bohemian spirit lives on at Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn, where you can stay and dine in the reclaimed redwood cabins that hosted and inspired so many creative icons—from Richard Brautigan and Ansel Adams to Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson. This modest gem in Monterey County has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1990.

Hike Mount Diablo, see superblooms, and more

Courtesy of Obi Kaufmann

For Obi Kaufmann, an artist and author born in Hollywood and raised just east of Oakland in a family of scientists, California’s uncommon creativity stems from the land itself. Kaufmann has written and illustrated six books, each channeling California’s natural world from a different perspective, and turned an early love of hiking Mount Diablo—a 3,849-foot summit about an hour east of San Francisco—into a career.

His work blends watercolor illustrations, cartography, poetry, and prose to explore California, including in his books, The California Field Atlas and The California Lands Trilogy. From Los Angeles to the East Bay, with stops in nearly every far-flung corner in between, California has been a vast source of inspiration for the multi-hyphenate artist.

“I could make a hundred maps a day for the rest of my life and not even touch the potentially infinite beauty of this place,” he says. Drawing from a passionate, fundamentally conservationist perspective, Kaufmann reasons that Native Californians have long celebrated and sustained the unique diversity of this land.

“There are more Indigenous languages spoken [in California] than there are languages recognized by the Los Angeles School District,” the author says. “And wherever you get a density of Indigenous languages in any given area, you get a corresponding increase in biodiversity…often that biodiversity is endemic, meaning that it exists nowhere else on the planet.”

Courtesy of John Fowler/Unsplash

To explore the state through this lens, Kaufmann recommends simply setting out on foot, prepared with a notebook for when inspiration strikes. His long list of suggestions includes a visit to the Sand to Snow National Monument—where hikers can go from the Mojave Desert up to the 11,520-foot summit of San Gorgonio—as well as seasonal superblooms like that of Death Valley National Park.

Perhaps the most alluring hike of all, he says, is the Bigfoot Trail, a 360-mile route that cuts across the Klamath Mountains in California’s northwestern extreme. “You pass through one area inside the Russian wilderness, which is one of the most magical spots on the planet,” he says. “Scientists call this place the Miracle Mile because… there are 19 different [tree] species in this one square mile.” A self-declared “urban coyote” living in Oakland, Kaufmann also stresses that nature remains accessible, even in California’s most densely packed urban centers. You can check out his beloved Mount Diablo, walk the remarkably biodiverse Cactus Loop Trails of San Diego County, or even take a leisurely hike up to Griffith Observatory in Kaufmann’s birthplace. The beauty is that in a state so full of “headline grabber” destinations, as he calls them, you don’t need to travel far to find one.

Go on a self-guided architecture tour from Los Angeles to Berkeley

Courtesy of Visit California

Los Angeles-based architect Barbara Bestor’s career path has run right to the heart of California’s most creative urban communities. Drawn in by Los Angeles’ tradition of bold yet accessible architecture, her approach focuses on the idea that thoughtful use of space can create community.

“California was the only place in America actually doing interesting architecture by the late ‘80s,” she says, recalling what first drew her to the state. “It was a lot of low-budget experimentalism by [Frank] Gehry, Metamorphosis, a bunch of other people…who thought architecture could be a form of art making.” As the founder and principal of Bestor Architecture in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood, Bestor upholds that tradition in her own work along with a drive toward civic responsibility.

Courtesy of Barbara Bestor

One such work, the Blackbirds development in Echo Park, anchors an 18-home community around a “living” courtyard. In South Central, Summaeverythang Community Center strives to support the “holistic well-being” of individuals from all backgrounds by fostering a new generation of art and design. In Culver City, the firm’s conception of the Beats by Dre headquarters orients different rooms with different atmospheres, inviting people to look up from their screens and be more conscious of their surroundings.

Bestor supports a similar mentality when it comes to touring her city, encouraging people to be more mindful of the profoundly distinctive, oft-overlooked neighborhoods that serve as “well-preserved capsules of California history.” The details—the furniture stores of Melrose Hill, the Kosher bakeries of the Fairfax District, and the western wear stores and nail salons in the San Fernando Valley—are what Bestor finds especially inspiring.

For first-time visitors to Los Angeles who might not otherwise know where to begin, however, Bestor recommends a walk through Downtown Los Angeles. Enjoy a moment in the garden tucked among the dynamic metal curves of Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Courtesy of Visit California/Max Whittaker

Nearby, you can trace the remains of the original structure lost to fire at the Central Library or check out the exclusive California Club next door, which the architect notes is worth a look from the outside even if you aren’t a member.

At the Bradbury Building, see the restored Victorian atrium that served as a backdrop in the original Blade Runner film. Cross the street to eat at Grand Central Market, then catch a ride up the century-old funicular called Angels Flight to the postmodern Museum of Contemporary Art.

Beyond Los Angeles, Bestor marvels at how easy it is to spend a blissful weekend among the cliffs at Palos Verdes’ Terranea Resort. In Joshua Tree, she recommends a visit to the Institute of Mentalphysics—a former spiritual retreat with triangular cabins designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son—and in Rancho Mirage, Sunnylands, Walter Annenberg’s modernist estate.

Further north, Bestor loves visiting the Julia Morgan–designed Berkeley Faculty Club (“you could have checked in there in 1948 and it would probably be the same”). In neighboring Oakland, she suggests the Oakland Museum of California, an underappreciated feat of sustainable, green-roofed brutalism whose public, terraced gardens spill down toward Lake Merritt.

See gardens in the Bay Area and beyond

Growing up just across the bay in San Francisco, architect and horticulturalist Roderick Wyllie found himself immersed in a sort of “wild frontier,” instilled with a sense of open-eyed curiosity from a young age. Today, as co-founder of the landscape architecture firm Surfacedesign with his partner, James Lord, the third-generation San Franciscan continues to confront the concept of the wild with a similar childlike wonder.

Courtesy of Roderick Wyllie

As its name suggests, Surfacedesign is about “touching and composing the experience of the ground,” collaborating with others to engage with the natural world in a constructive, holistic way. That might find the team restoring the ecosystem of a former dump with a microorganism-rich “compost tea” developed in collaboration with soil engineers, or preventing the erosion of the protected dunes of San Francisco’s Lands End Lookout through the cultivation of native foliage.

Lands End is among the many projects Wyllie has worked on in and around his home, each of which remains rooted in California history and shaped by environmental concerns. Mission Bay Bayfront Park, a 5.5-acre patch of green in a predominantly industrial area, incorporates reclaimed fragments of the demolished Bay Bridge positioned in direct sightlines to its replacement.

Further north at the di Rosa Preserve, part of the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa Valley, Wyllie and his team explored how rethinking our approach to the landscape can stave off the threat of wildfires. Also in Napa Valley, when challenged with co-designing the new Robert Mondavi Winery, Surfacedesign consciously rejected old-world European aesthetics typical of so many new-world wineries.

Instead, they honored the surrounding natural beauty and Mondavi’s role in shaping the region. The project is also mindful of natural resources with features like a stark, gabled roof that frames the vineyard’s existing iconic arch, mimics the surrounding Mayacamas Mountains—and helps the winery collect rainwater.

When it comes to exploring the region, Wyllie is equally mindful and curious in his approach. In Sonoma County, he singles out Valley, a restaurant, wine bar, and bottle shop, for its informal warmth and locally sourced, exceptionally creative cooking. Back in San Francisco, he gives the enduring Zuni Café a shoutout, marveling at how it feels intimate yet exposed to the city.

For something a little different, the designer recommends the Minnesota Street Project, a series of converted industrial buildings that house a rotating collection of art galleries and studios in the city’s Dogpatch neighborhood. He also suggests shopping at MAC: Modern Appealing Clothing in Hayes Valley, where he once helped build an interior garden complete with a functioning riverbed that ran through the boutique.

Courtesy of brewbooks/Flickr

To enjoy the bountiful outdoors, Wyllie has a trove of equally wondrous green spaces in California worth building a trip around. The Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek is an extraordinary dry garden of succulents that has been stewarded for decades and rewards long, contemplative strolls. Lotusland in Montecito is a singularly expressive landscape curated by an opera singer, complete with views of the Santa Barbara hills. The Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino is vast and impeccably maintained, and the blooming magnolias in Golden Gate Park are, he says, “complete joy.”

Wyllie also shares his unbridled love for the coastline north of his city, including the charming towns of Inverness and Point Reyes. “I feel a little hesitant to say that I want to touch it,” he says, “because I kind of want it to not be touched.” It’s quite the statement, particularly for someone in his line of work, but in California, it can be hard to top what nature already created.