From San José southward, the bike trail was glorious, passing dense forest, fields of corn bordered by an intense blue wildflower that we eventually identified as blue gilia, and gray heron and white egrets perched along the riverbanks.
This thin barrier island can be quickly crossed by bike: five minutes takes you to the other side, which borders the part of the Intracoastal Waterway known as Lake Worth, and a glorious jogging and bike trail runs along the water for miles.
Sightseeing Seattle boasts many bike trails offering glorious vistas of the city, Puget Sound and both the Olympic and Cascade Mountains.
But the storied investment houses of Wall Street, trailing their glorious past, have now earned tombstone ads of a very different sort.
From here, it's five minutes' walk west to the entrance of Ashton Court Estate (22), a rolling, 850-acre country park with trails through glorious meadows, mature woodland and deer enclosures.
Squamish Once simply somewhere you passed en route to Whistler, the new Sea to Sky Gondola – which climbs 885 metres above sea level to access hiking trails through glorious mountain terrain – has made Squamish a destination in its own right.
In Ojai the next morning I discovered the downside of road trips while jogging on a stunning route that led me from the quaint little main street up along a ridge trail with a glorious view of the town below, and then down a flat road through groves of orange trees bursting with white flowers.
So said the legendary Austrian pianist Artur Schnabel, who blazed a trail across those glorious peaks when he recorded them all for the first time in the 1930s, leaving all future pianists in his shadow.
There are a lighthouse from 1867, a visitors center, walking trails and a glorious long and wide ocean beach.
