Marin County (California)

The glossy elephant seal pup reached around its stuffed sausage of a body and, given its girth, made an improbable move. Scratching its head with a flipper, it sighed, then gazed lazily at me as if to say, "What are you doing hiking here when there's so...

This list of visitor information offices, edited by The Times for space, was provided in part by the California Division of Tourism in Sacramento. Amador County: Amador County Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau, P.O. Box 596, Jackson 95642; (800) 649-...

Our list of Web travel resources grows every year -- and with good reason. According to the Travel Industry Assn. of America, 56% of all travelers in the U.S. use the Internet to plan trips. Of that group, 6 in 10 actually made reservations online, and 4...

Last week, behind closed doors, veteran attorneys of the tobacco wars taught a class on how to attack what they say is the nation's latest health affliction: fast food. The session at Northeastern University was as secretive as McDonald's has been...

Even here in the heart of famously tolerant Marin County, John Walker cut an atypical path. He attended an alternative high school. He converted to Islam at 16 after reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." He raised eyebrows among neighbors by...

When he was a teenager, John Walker left the bucolic hills of affluent Marin County in California for the mosques and religious schooling offered in Yemen. He was intent on studying Islam, the religion that had captivated him since he had completed a...

Films about women in a whole lot of trouble must be making a whole lot of money because here's another one. They don't all star Ashley Judd, but after "Kiss the Girls," "Double Jeopardy" and now "High Crimes," it's starting to seem that way. It's not...

If California has happy cows, they must live in west Marin County. There are more bovines than people on Point Reyes Peninsula, and any place that has more four-footed creatures than people promises pastoral vistas. My 90-mile circular route, taken in...

California Gov. Gray Davis warned Thursday that there was "credible evidence" that rush-hour terrorist attacks could be directed against four of the state's suspension bridges, including the landmark Golden Gate Bridge spanning San Francisco Bay. Davis'...

Shoppers swarm around the farmers market stall. After the rainy California winter, strawberries, peas and fava beans, those heralds of spring, are hot sellers. Some customers move in for the kill, brandishing their trophy produce in one hand and exact...

Novelist T.C. Boyle isn't about to take the end of the world sitting down, especially not today. Just back from a monthlong book tour for "Drop City," his novel of counterculture meltdown, he knows there's no time to waste. The battle's gone personal, and...

This city has plenty of aches and pains — a dot-com hangover, an economic malaise exacerbated by weak foreign tourism and now the SARS outbreak, which has even some locals skittish about strolling through Chinatown. So thank goodness for folks like...