by MacKenzie Geidt, Sunset assistant travel editor

Since I'm developing a negative reputation around here as the low-brow food junkie of the group, I just want to say right off the bat that this is NOT a blog about corn dogs. Okay, it kind of is, but it's MORE about the people who make them and what they get to wear.  Is this not the most fabulous employee uniform for someone making corn dogs and lemonade? 

Hot Dog on a Stick, which opened their first stand in Santa Monica in 1946, is still the best place for corn dogs and fresh lemonade in LA.  Hands down.                                                                                       

But what I really can't get over is just how darn cute the uniforms are!  Those primary colored striped jerseys, cute little navy shorts, and funky fez hats are enough to make me want to work there (okay maybe just for a day, since dipping the dogs in batter and churning the lemons sounds rather labor intensive...). Don't they just look cheery and retro chic?  Look at this little gaggle of HDOS gals--they look like they're part of a hot dog sorority that I want to be a part of!                                 

Please let me join this lemony sisterhood!  Don't they look joyful and happy?  (maybe it's because the company is employee-owned??)  Do you think they choreograph routines to do in their uniforms?

Here's their stand right next to the Santa Monica Pier on Ocean Front Walk (it's the original stand from 1946!)

So you really should stop here the next time you're in Santa Monica and get yourself a freshly dipped dog and a citrusiously tasty lemonade (they even sell jugs if you want to take some home).  And take a moment to appreciate the adorableness of their employees.  As cheesy as it sounds, I feel happy every time I go there, so who knows, maybe it'll have the same effect on you....

By Rachel Levin, Sunset senior editor

I’m easily overwhelemed by Los Angeles—the congested highway-like boulevards; the purse-sized dogs; the perma-tanned men in tank tops; the cosmetic surgery; the scene... I sound like a tourist, I know. But, well, that’s what I am when I’m there. Which is not very often. Last time I went to LA, I stayed at the then-new and trendy Avalon Hotel with a few friends who forced me to leave my Dansko clogs and fleece in the room and dressed me in a slinky top with faux leather pants. We hit all the red-roped hot spots of the moment (The Standard, Deep, dinner at some swank, soulless restaurant I can’t recall, where all the women were 10-feet tall.) The whole weekend was very fun, and very Sex and the City (opening tomorrow night! Can’t wait!). Still, I hadn’t been back since.

Until, that is, this weekend, when I flew down for no other reason than to hang out with a few girlfriends. We had no agenda, no clubs we just had to hit. The plan was to catch up, lounge poolside at our hotel, and eat well. And we did just that—sure, it was 55 degrees and cloudy, but whatever. My fleece came in handy, as did the hotel’s towels. (I mean, I thought LA was supposed to always be 80s and sunny!)

Anyway. My initial point in this post was to tout our fabulous hotel: the Chamberlain. An intimate 114-room inn which set the tone for our laidback (but still stylish) LA weekend. It’s a member of the Kor Hotel group, which includes such in-your-face-fabulous digs as the Avalon and the Viceroy—the Chamberlain, however, was cool but low-key. Hidden on a quiet tree-lined residential street in West Hollywood, but conveniently a quick walk to the Sunset Strip, it’s the kind of hotel that feels like home. Our room, with two super comfy queen beds plus a sitting area, vanity area, (an okay) bathroom, and balcony, was about as roomy as home, too. And it was a reasonable $250/night. Small but heated, and surrounded by cabanas, cloth-covered chaise longues and pillow-topped beds, the rooftop pool felt like ours too—and it was, pretty much, all day Saturday.

The only drawback? The Chamberlain is so chill, the service kinda is, too. The health-focused bistro forgot to deliver our blueberry smoothie, soy-cheese veggie wrap, and cobb salad even though, like I said, we were the only ones at the pool. But they more than made up for it by comping our meal and bringing a box of truffles when one of my friends happened to mention she was having a chocolate craving. My room key refused to work a couple of times (annoying, especially when the bathroom by the pool was out of service and I ran down to our room instead, only to find I couldn't get in...). And when we first arrived, the water was off throughout the hotel. Still, despite all its initial flaws, the Chamberlain (with its friendly staff, chic but comfortable gray-blue decor, unbeatable location, and refreshing lack of fake boobs) redeemed itself by the end of the weekend—and we all agreed we would definitely stay there again on our next jaunt to LA. Which will be soon, I promised myself.

Oh, a quick note on eating well in LA... Since, after all, that was part of our plan:

One night, we went to a friend’s BBQ in the Hollywood Hills. His house, with its commitment to “outdoor living” (fireplace, couches, landscaped pool) looked like it could have been ripped from the pages of Sunset. A one-time Top Chef contestant was cooking too! (Brian Hill, we were wary but later Googled him.) He made these killer jerk chicken wings...

I tried three weeks ago to get a reservation at Pizzeria Mozza, but they had nothing before 10:30pm. Maybe next time.

We would have gone to Citizen Smith (recommended by our Top Chef, but the reservationist kindly informed us they'd be playing loud house music all night. We tried another of Brian's recs, One Sunset, but it was closed for a private event. So we happily headed to the oh-so hip Silverlake neighborhood instead, where we had our fill of tacos (carnitas, lobster, fish) at Malo Taqueria Chicana.

But my favorite meal of the weekend was dinner at Suzanne Goin’s A.O.C, where we enjoyed a deep booth and a parade of Mediterranean small plates worth flying for: Dungeness crab with sweet pea pancakes; endive scattered with fava beans and dressed with meyer-lemon and black olives; silky gnocchi with lobster, pancetta, and truffle butter; and this blistered flatbread with lamb, pinenuts, and fava that I’m still dreaming about. (Sorry, next time I'll take pics.)

By Amy Wolf, Sunset travel editor

What do you do when you see this sort of thing through the windshield of your Volvo Cross Country as you’re driving 50 mph along Highway 1?

If you’re like me, you yell to your husband, “Grab your camera! This’ll make a great blog!” If you’re like my husband’s friend Peter, you say, “Camera? Forget that—grab the knife. This looks like good eats!” If you’re like my husband, you ignore your preposterous friend and listen to your wife, and dutifully snap a photo of the cow.

Then you inch closer to get a better shot (while your wife waves and gestures and smiles to the driver of the oncoming car in the other lane, who is just as amused as you are). And you note how nice everyone is, remembering how the driver of the car who crossed paths with you moments before let out a polite honk that you hadn’t understood at that moment but that made sense when you saw the cow. It was the “warning: cow crossing” honk.

And then you inch even closer, to get a really good look at this bovine breaker of CHP laws. What is this dude doing way up on this vertiginous cliff? You can’t really blame him, though, the views are so incredible up here.

And then you drive on, shrugging your shoulders and chalking it up to life here in sunny California, where even the cows like to be nonconformists.

By Amy Wolf, Sunset travel editor

When we were packing up to head to the little coastal town of Gualala for Memorial Day weekend, I wasn’t entirely sure I knew where Gualala was, even though, truth be told, I edited a story about this rugged stretch of the Sonoma Coast just a couple of years ago.

Nor did I know how to pronounce Gualala. Do you?

In case your answer was no, Gualala is just north of Sea Ranch Lodge, about an hour south of Mendocino. And it’s NOT pronounced GWA-la-la. It’s wa-LA-la. Locals are adamant about that. I saw a license plate that said GWAA-LA-LA. Damn, I should have photographed that. Anyway, now I’m in love with Gualala. Here’s why.

Reason #1. The drive to get there is spectacular. This is the kind of scenery I like to use to prove to my New York in-laws that they're missing out.

Reason #2. It’s got stunning little beaches that no one goes to. Like the one just down the road from the house we rented. We were the only ones there. Us and the sand crabs, actually.

The sand crabs made a fine appetizer later that evening. My husband gathered a bunch and held them captive in his new Real Deal hat. The hat, by the way, was one of the best pieces of swag I've received in a long time. It's made of recycled tarps from Brazil and is not only an ecologically genius idea but also sort of sexy. Don't you think?

My husband's friend Peter pretended to eat a crab raw, just to freak out my kids. (I don’t think the crabs thought the hat was so sexy, by the way.)

Reason #3. It’s abalone divers’ heaven. (Please don’t ask me for details or my husband will never speak to me again.)

Reason #4. It’s got a gorgeous county park, Gualala Point County Park, with a spectacular blufftop trail that I got to run along yesterday. The trail cuts through Sea Ranch Lodge property, so you get to enjoy the lucky Sea Ranch dwellers’ views without having to pay to stay there. I made sure not to stray from the well-trodden path for fear of being shot (signs all along the way remind you not to trespass) as I drank in dizzying views of the ocean and the sweet-honey smell of yellow lupine.

Reason #4. One of the coast’s best restaurants, Pangaea, is right in town.

Reason #5. The absolute most amazing beach I’ve ever been to, Bowling Ball Beach, is 15 minutes away.

Tune in tomorrow for more on the bowling balls, plus the most unusual experience I’ve ever had on a California highway...

by Matthew Jaffe, Sunset senior writer

We moved into the summer movie season this weekend and as usual the West is making cameos as every locale from Afghanistan to the Amazon. Even in an era of increasingly sophisticated computer generated effects, nothing beats location shooting, as two of the year’s biggest movies, Iron Man and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are proving. (For a look at some of these and other film locations, check out Vacation On Location at fandango.com.)

Living in SoCal, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing places I know pop up on screen, even in comic book movies such as Iron Man.  Movies always require a certain suspension of disbelief, but this one a bit more so than usual thanks to its use of familiar locations.

Tony Stark’s mansion for example was computer generated then plopped down on one of my favorite coastal spots, Malibu’s Point Dume— which luckily has stayed mostly free of such architectural megalomania. There are key scenes at Walt Disney Concert Hall, a building that managed to look every bit as futuristic as Tony’s home, while the Alabama Hills and the Eastern Sierra near Lone Pine stood in (and convincingly) for Afghanistan.

Along with Kanab, Utah and Monument Valley on the Arizona-Utah border, Lone Pine is one of several remote spots around the West with a long movie tradition. Filmmaking in this High Desert Hollywood dates to the 1920s and the stark landscape has appeared in numerous westerns, as well as in epics ranging from Gunga Din to Gladiator.

Each October, the community hosts the Lone Pine Film Festival, which features screenings and tours of movie locations, including a special guided trip, Iron Man and Beyond, that will take visitors out to sites used in the film. The Lone Pine Film History Museum (which has a new Iron Man exhibit) also offers an excellent self-guided tour brochure with ten stops in the Alabama Hills along what has come to be known as Movie Road.

Indiana Jones also made extensive use of western landscapes. The movie opens in Nevada, which is actually played by New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch northwest of Santa Fe. With appearances in 3:10 To Yuma and The Missing, Ghost Ranch has emerged as a go-to filming location in recent years. Then again, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard et al have nothing on artist Georgia O’Keeffe; she moved to the area in the 1930s and eventually lived for 50 years around Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu.

The landscape became synonymous with her art, and she described it as “perfectly mad looking country—hills and cliffs and washes too crazy to imagine all thrown up into the air by God and let tumble where they would. It was certainly as spectacular as anything I’ve ever seen—and that was pretty good.”

The other major location for Indiana Jones is the Puna District on the Big Island south of Hilo. Spielberg used the dense jungles of this, the wet side of the Big Island, during a chase scene that ranks with the best in the Jones series. The swinging vines and chaotic thickets of albizzia and wild guava are the botanical opposite of the open high desert expanses of Ghost Ranch. It helps give the movie the geographic sweep that viewers have come to expect in the Indiana Jones films and is a reminder of what Hollywood has known for generations: to see the world, all you have to do is get out and explore Sunset’s West.

(Movie Stills copyright Paramount Pictures)

By Peter Fish, Sunset Editor-at-Large

Here are three reasons to go to Logan, Utah.

1. It’s right on U.S. 89.
The most direct route between Salt Lake City and Yellowstone.   

2. Prettiest town of any size in Utah.
All around it are green mountains and green pastures—Cache Valley is a famous dairy region. Downtown Logan’s Main Street is lined with nicely spruced-up early 20th century buildings; the older residential streets have beautiful craftsman bungalows sitting primly beneath cottonwood trees.

3. The Bluebird Cafe
Reasons one and two are self-explanatory. As for reason 3, The Bluebird Cafe has been in Logan since 1914, and it’s just what a small-town cafe should be: A cool retreat where shiny chrome stools are arrayed in front of a long marble counter and your biggest dilemma is deciding which ice cream sundae to order.  (The Bluebird has a regular cafe menu too but really, you want to go here for ice cream.)  I chose a simple hot fudge and it was perfect--not enormous but at $3.95 a good value. In the “interesting but not entirely successful” category was the accompanying soft drink, an old-fashioned concoction called an Ironport that tasted a little like cherry soda mixed with bitters.  Bluebird Cafe, 19 N Main St., Logan; (435) 752-3155.

By Peter Fish, Sunset Editor-at-Large

Sam Weller’s Zion Bookstore is to Salt Lake City what Powell’s is to Portland--essential, irreplaceable, wonderful. It’s been there a long time (since 1929) and has woven itself into the city’s history--enviro writer Terry Tempest Williams supposedly met her husband while both worked there. What I like about it most—along with its beautiful pressed tin ceilings—is that it has the books you know you want and also the books you don’t know you want until you see them. For me, that second kind of encounter usually occurs in Sam Weller’s big section of books about the West, where you find items like Uncle Sam’s Camels, the saga of the U.S. Army’s 19th century effort to replace Army mules with, well, Army camels in the desert southwest.   A relative newcomer is the Coffee Garden, the bookstore’s caffeinated corner where you can get lattes and muffins and sit reading what you’ve just bought.  Which could be In Style or Sports Illustrated but which was in my case Uncle Sam’s Camels. Here’s my equation: cappuccino + camels = pleasure.

By Rachel Levin, Sunset senior editor

I remember, not too long ago, when Bass Lake—a rare, swimmable body of water in West Marin, reachable by a 3-mile hike along the coastal Palomarin Trail—was a secret. Or at least it felt like a secret... I’ve skinny-dipped there on second dates (bold, I know); dog-paddled in the rain with old boyfriends; lounged on blow-up rafts gossiping with girlfriends... Each time, we’d have the shrub-enshrouded lake all to ourselves, treading sparkling black water, leaping off the rope swing, feeling like the carefree kids we used to be. (And, of course, getting poison oak from the overgrown path to the water every time.)

This past weekend, though, I went back to Bass Lake for a friend’s bachelorette party. (Vegas, obviously, isn't our style.) We rolled in mid-morning, our cars covered in dust from the long dirt road, to a sea of other dusty cars which would multiply by noon. (Looking for parking to spend a day outdoors has gotta be one of my biggest pet peeves, but such is life in the beautiful Bay Area.)

Still, we hiked, chatted, laughed, complained about how damn hot out it was and how we couldn’t wait to jump in. We were one of the early groups to arrive, so we were able to spread our picnic blanket in one of the few shady areas left. (The picnic, by the way, was a Sunset spread. Not my doing, I swear! The party organizer organized a potluck: grilled buttermilk chicken, corn and arugula salad, spiced cornmeal pound cake. A few bottles of reisling recommended, as is the entire menu. Click here for recipes.

If you haven't been to Bass Lake, a few things to note: 1) Lest you think there’s a long, sandy beach to lounge on, there’s not—just a dry plateau with a few scrambles leading down to the water. 2) The ranger, unfortunately, just cut the rope swing when we were there. (Maybe someone will tie a new one...) 3) The launching areas are pretty tight, and skinnydippers do occasionally take over, so it can get kinda awkwardly crowded down there. Just so you know.

A writer actually pitched Bass Lake as a “secret” for our July SECRETS issue—coming soon to a newsstand near you—but we axed it because, well, it’s just not anymore. But don’t let that deter you. It's still one of the very best ways to spend a summery day in the Bay Area. That parking lot is crowded for a reason. Just get there early enough to score a spot.

by MacKenzie Geidt, Sunset assistant travel editor

When I take myself out to a ballgame, I don't have any restraint when it comes to buying me some peanuts and Cracker Jack.  I'll admit, maybe I'm not the ideal fan—I don't care much about RBIs, batting averages, or steroid scandals.  What I love about baseball is less about the game, and more about what I like to call the atmospheric accessories....okay, let's get real: the chow.  AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, is a gorgeous first-class sports arena with stunning bay views and fabulous sky boxes, yada yada yada.  But there's a couple of reasons I love going to games that have nothin' to do with the sluggers....

1.  GILROY GARLIC FRIES.  Order them.  Eat them.  And for their sake, stay far far away from loved ones (your breath will improve after a couple of days, I promise). About $6.75 for a heaping basket of heaven.  Many stands throughout the park so you'll have trouble avoiding the temptation.  They might even inspire you to go to the Gilroy Garlic Festival in July—they're that good...

2. Let's Be Frank Dogs: stop by the stand outside the stadium to pick up one of these guilt-free puppies.  100% grass-fed beef with all-organic condiments.  But more importantly, they're incredibly good!  $5.50 for the basic frank.                                        

3. Gordon Biersch started in Palo Alto, so give props to California brewers!  Goes great with dogs and fries. 

4. Who you gonna call?  This may look like one of the ghost-busters, but if you're needing a wake-up jolt at the game, isn't it comforting to know that someone with a fire-hydrant full of Tully's on his back is willing to come to your seat to give you a dose?  Oh, and it's an independent Seattle-based brewer, so you're still being loyal to the West with your order....

5.  And for a brief moment of NON-gluttony: people, there's just no prettier ballpark.  Anywhere.  See you at the game!  (or at least in line for the fries...)

By Sara Schneider, Sunset wine editor

Last Friday, California wine lost the most important voice it’s had over the last half-century, and Sunset lost a passionate advocate for causes we share.

Robert Mondavi—who founded the first major California winery after the repeal of Prohibition and spent the rest of his life as an ad hoc (sometimes very) ambassador for Golden State wines throughout the world—died. He was 94.

The Sunset connection
Mondavi had two main messages, which parallel our mission here at Sunset rather remarkably: first, that California wine can be as good as any in the world—a lonely thought when he first expressed it, but disputed by few today. And second, that wine belongs in the context of a lifestyle; it’s meant to be shared with family and friends, with a lot of good food alongside. (Well, most people might see it the other way around on that last front, but I think Mondavi had it right.)

Sunset is a similar voice in the West. We celebrate the world-class products and experiences that our part of the country offers, and, like Mondavi, for us eating and drinking well is a lifestyle. The connection runs even to a shared architect. Sunset lore has it that on first seeing our headquarters in Menlo Park, designed by the legendary Cliff May, Mondavi reportedly decided on the spot that his namesake winery needed the same hand. So our sister buildings share the Mission heritage that Cliff May drew on, as well as the gracious, hospitable, indoor-outdoor spaces core to the values of both companies.

On a personal note
I met Robert Mondavi enough times to claim the right to call him “Bob” in Napa circles, if not enough for my name to register on his well-peopled radar. Yet sitting across from him at dinner in the winery’s Vintage Room or shaking hands at any one of the Valley events that he and his wife Margrit were so willing to throw their considerable weight behind, I never got less than a passionate thought about whatever was at the top of his mind on wine, food, and what we should all be doing about them. For Bob Mondavi was a man who shared—not only his resources but himself.

We at Sunset thank Margrit, as well as Michael, Marsha, and Tim—Mr. Mondavi’s children—for sharing him with us. We mourn his loss with you, but we also celebrate the life and ongoing vision of a giant of a vintner and man.

For more on Mondavi, see our 2003 interview.

Photo by Robert Olding