Here’s our growing guide to essential California adventures, easy to edgy. We’ll be adding to it daily all year. And we won’t suggest an adventure unless one of the Travel section’s staffers and contributors have tried it.
Tell us what’s on your California bucket list. Email travel@latimes.com and put California Bucket List in the subject line.
Why: Because your mission is to boldly go where William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy have gone before.
What: The jagged and otherworldly forms of Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park , a 932-acre geological oddity in northeastern L.A. County, have been attracting film crews for nearly a century. But no film or TV property can match the “Star Trek” franchise’s faithfulness. Fenomenbet
In a beloved episode called “Arena,” Captain Kirk battled an overgrown lizard called a Gorn amid these red rocks. In the “Friday’s Child” episode, these rocks represented the planet Capella IV. In the “Shore Leave” episode, the rocks stand in for planet Omicron Delta, where Kirk is again called upon to do battle. The list goes on.
In fact, the entertainment reference site IMDB lists more than 350 productions that have shot at the rocks, including the films “Austin Powers,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Frankenstein” (the 1931 Boris Karloff version) and “Dracula” (the 1931 Bela Lugosi version) and the TV shows “Maverick,” “Kung Fu” and “The Big Bang Theory.”
All this action follows an equally lively pre-Hollywood history: In the 1870s, a notorious bandit named Tiburcio Vásquez used to hide out here to avoid the law.
Where: 10700 W. Escondido Canyon Road, Agua Dulce, Los Angeles County, 43 miles north of downtown L.A.
How much: Free.
Info: Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park
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