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– Doug McConnell

Owens Valley photo by James Gordon

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Photo by Carl Bidleman

Watch our video about taking a classic California road trip on Highway 1 along Big Sur’s Glorious Coast.

– Carl Bidleman

A big storm is hitting the west coast promising gale force winds. For me it looks like a good weekend to hunker down, stay dry, edit a Life Outside the Box episode with Scott Beale for Monday, and imagine some future travels. But for Doug, the annual Santa Cruz Clam Chowder Cook Off & Festival has lured him to the boardwalk in Santa Cruz to judge the culinary arts. Hang on to your bowls, Doug.

Death Valley Photo: Betsy Husband

As for imagining future travels, we got a delightful new post from Betsy Husband today. She writes an evocative portrait of Death Valley.

And if you want more on Death Valley, check out the Death Valley Fun and Adventures video my neighbors Janet and Jeff Conley posted awhile back.

And finally, my wife, Karen, has been urging me to plan a winter trip to see Death Valley’s wildflowers. Anyone else have some tips they’d like to share and help me get a life outside the box?

Doug McConnell

We’re looking forward to hitting the open road with John and Jill Lakastigala, the winners of our “One-Day Road Trip” prize, which they won at the Bay Area Travel Show. We’ve been exchanging messages and are targeting a weekend day in February either in the East Bay or up in Marin or Sonoma counties. I gave them some suggestions that include the summit of Mt. Diablo, John Muir’s family home, Jack London’s old ranch, a gaggle of wineries and much more. John and Jill get to decide where we go. We’ll give you all a full report right here when the trip is done. In the meantime, it’s good to see their Golden Retriever. All of us in the OpenRoad.TV office go home to Goldens ourselves. Carl has Jack, M’Gee has Daisy and I’ve got Pumpkin. By the way, Pumpkin and Daisy are smitten with each other. Both are unable to do anything serious about it but they do enjoy long walks in the woods together.