They just completed all of L.A. Times' 101 Best California Experiences — and we've got questions!

By December of 2023, Paul Preston realized that his woman Susan Huckle was a large instrumentality of roadworthy trips and lists. So for Christmas, helium gave her L.A. Times’ ”101 Best California Experiences” zine, a traveler’s bucket database highlighting my apical destinations passim my 4 decades of traveling the state.

The gift, I’m delighted to hear, was a hit.

Preston and Huckle went done it and checked disconnected locations they’d seen already. Then they deed the road.

And now, aft 2 and a fractional years of roaming the authorities betwixt enactment assignments, they’re backmost to study that they’ve covered each 101 locations connected that list. Though the 2 person besides traveled beyond authorities lines, the quest to screen California “totally informed our lives for the past 2 oregon 3 years,” said Huckle, who sent maine a enactment of acknowledgment aft ticking the past box.

After the enactment arrived, I was anxious to telephone them and larn more. I caught the couple, of course, successful the mediate of a time trip.

Susan Huckle and Paul Preston acceptable retired to sojourn each spot connected the L.A. Times’ 2023 database of “101 Best California Experiences.” Along the way, they got joined successful Yosemite Valley.

(Nick Wuthrich)

“We’re retired exploring,” Preston said. “So you’re getting what we’re about.”

They’re besides present married. That happened past July successful Yosemite Valley, which, yes, was connected the list.

Huckle, 41, an actress, a big connected “L.A. This Week” connected Channel 35, a Universal Studios performer and an author, grew up successful Santa Maria connected California’s Central Coast.

Preston, 56, is besides an actor. He leads movie determination tours and hosts podcasts, movie trivia nights and peculiar events. He grew up and went to assemblage connected the East Coast, truthful helium had less California miles nether his loop erstwhile the mates met successful 2020.

Their California 101 travels began successful aboriginal 2024 with a travel to Paso Robles, wherever they saw the greenish slopes on Highway 46, Morro Rock and the elephant seals astatine Piedras Blancas adjacent Hearst Castle.

“And then,” Preston said, “we conscionable kept going.”

Some of their astir satisfying stops, the 2 agreed, were places they hadn’t heard of, specified arsenic Orange Works successful the Central Valley municipality of Strathmore and Angel Island State Park, sometimes known arsenic the Ellis Island of the West. Huckle called Angel Island “a matrimony of earthy quality with great, powerful, historical information.”

By aboriginal this year, determination were lone a fewer destinations near to check.

In April, they did the Indian Canyons and Sunnylands property adjacent Palm Springs, the Integratron adjacent Joshua Tree and the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture successful Riverside. In June, they rafted the South Fork of the American River, on with stops successful Old Sacramento and, past of all, Columbia State Historic Park. Then they made their ain favorites lists.

Susan Huckle’s top 10:

Yosemite Valley
Badwater Basin
Mammoth Mountain
Angel Island State Park
Cheech Marin Center
Joshua Tree National Park
American River South Fork
The Marshall Store connected Tomales Bay
Santa Cruz Island
Sunnylands

Paul Preston’s apical 10:

Yosemite Valley
Hollywood Bowl
Griffith Observatory
Catalina
Mammoth Mountain
American River South Fork
Erick Schats’ Bakery successful Bishop
Huntington Library and Gardens
Palm Springs Aerial Tramway
Balboa Park, San Diego

Now that they’ve seen truthful overmuch of the state, I had questions. For one, which spots not connected the database would they person included?

Alcatraz, they agreed. Also, arsenic an admirer of redwoods, Preston liked Calaveras Big Trees State Park. As an avid cyclist, Huckle liked the 22-mile Marvin Braude Bike Trail from Torrance to Pacific Palisades.

And was thing connected the database a disappointment?

“The Carmel Mission,” Huckle said quickly. “It’s beauteous and the missions are an important portion of California history.” But she said the mission’s relationship of its ain past seemed “whitewashed,” saying small astir the Native nonaccomplishment and trauma that historians are progressively recognizing successful accounts of the missions.

Said Huckle: “I was like, ‘C’mon guys, cipher truly thinks this immoderate more, right?’”

Now that they’re done with the Times’ “101 Best California Experiences,” what what volition signifier their adjacent trips?

They person a database for that. Huckle picked up an L.A. guide, Danny Jensen’s “Secret Los Angeles,” and the mates plans to commencement wherever the publication does, with the Triforium, a many-colored sculpture that went up extracurricular City Hall successful 1975 (and erstwhile featured music).

After that? Maybe the Faces of Elysian Valley, a postulation ellipse sculpture that Huckle said “looks similar Easter Island successful the mediate of Cypress Park.”

That volition permission lone astir 138 much destinations successful the publication to cover.

If anybody tin bash it, it’s these two.