Good morning, fellow Escapists.
Maybe it’s the hazy memory of school bus rides, or piling into a friend’s car at 7:15 a.m. to get to homeroom on time, or that first long, nervous ride to college with a plastic shower caddy poking me in the ribs.
Whatever the reason, back-to-school season always feels linked to travel in my mind.
My colleague Christopher Reynolds, who happens to have a daughter heading off to college this year, recently rounded up a list of the nine best college towns in California.
Each is a travel destination in its own right — and one is a perfect day trip for Angelenos.
Just 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles, Claremont is home to a consortium of five undergraduate colleges and two graduate schools, more than 20,000 trees and so much more.
That “so much more” includes its famous Packing House — worth a newsletter edition in itself — as well as fossils, folk music and a very photogenic train station.
But before we travel east to Claremont, let’s direct our gaze west to the coastline.
Earlier this summer, a reader sent me a helpful tool for planning beach adventures: the California Coastal Records Project. Made up of more than 96,000 photographs, it offers a continuous aerial view of the entire California coast, apart from Vandenberg Air Force Base. Use it to get a better look at what to expect on your next visit to a new beach.
Do you have a travel recommendation you’d like to share with fellow readers? As always, my inbox is open.
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? Hear live music at the Folk Music Center
The Folk Music Center started out in the back of Boots Beer’s Real Estate Office on Harvard Avenue in Claremont. It was 1958, and Charles and Dorothy Chase needed a place where they could celebrate the instruments and records they loved so dearly.
It wasn’t long before Dorothy was teaching hundreds of kids and adults to play guitar, banjo and other folk instruments, while Charles focused on instrument repair.
Today, the center is owned by Charles and Dorothy’s grandson, Grammy-winning artist Ben Harper. It’s a family affair; his mom, Ellen Harper, manages day-to-day operations (Ellen served as one of Reynolds’ “local guides” in his guide to California college towns).
“It could never be a normal upbringing in a place like this,” Ben Harper told Steve Appleford, a former features editor for Times Community News, in 2014. “It’s an oddity that has produced the last 20-some years of my adult life making music. Not only musically but the principles of this place — its music, its art, its poetry, its politics, its spirituality.”
The Folk Music Center is home to hundreds of hard-to-find musical instruments and items from around the globe. Time your visit to Claremont to coincide with one of the center’s open-mic nights, which take place on the last Sunday of every month, Reynolds reports.
“If you want to drop names, Phoebe Bridgers got her start here at our open mic. Not that long ago,” Ellen Harper told Reynolds.
On a visit to Claremont, take time to stroll the campus of one or two of its colleges. Ellen Harper (mentioned above) recommends the “lovely grounds” of Scripps College, as well as the John R. Rodman Arboretum at Pitzer College.
But Claremont’s colleges aren’t the only academic institutions worth visiting while in town. “The private Webb Schools have their own Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology, the only nationally accredited museum in the country located on a high school campus,” Times features…
Read More: What to do in Claremont: Hiking, museums, Packing House and more