CALIFORNIA
"California- From towering redwood forests in foggy Northern California to perfectly sun-kissed surf beaches in Southern California, this Golden State alongside the Pacific is a prize. California is older than it seems. Coastal bluffs and snowy peaks were created over millennia of tectonic upheavals that have threatened to shake California right off the continent. After unchecked 19th-century mining, logging and oil-drilling threatened to undermine the state’s natural splendors, California’s pioneering environmentalists – including John Muir and the Sierra Club – rescued old-growth trees and spurred the creation of national and state parks that still astound visitors today."
