Our 5 Favorite Travel Finds of the Week

The Treehouse at Swallowtail Studios, in Petaluma, CA—one of our favorite travel finds of the week.
(Photo by Andrea Minarcek.)

As a travel editor, I spend a lot of time scouring hotel and restaurant reviews, tracking vacation trends, and—I’ll admit—daydreaming about my own next trip. (It’s impossible not to!)

Some of my favorite finds you’ll see as stories in Sunset. But there are only so many pages in the magazine. A lot of great discoveries wind up on the cutting room floor, and I hate not getting to share them with our readers.

That’s why, from here on out, I’m vowing to post our team’s favorite travel finds of the week, every Friday. Starting… now!

Hike

Refreshing, waterside hikes—in SoCal? Yep. Our friends at Weekend Sherpa have the how-to on a great trek along the Matilija Creek in Los Padres National Forest.

Plan

A detailed primer on travel-rewards cards: Yes, please. Getting my miles in order has been a New Year’s resolution for three years running now.

Read

Two friends quit their jobs and set out to road trip the West—now that’s an adventure I want to read about. More of a pictures person? Peruse the Local Wanderers’ Instagram snaps.

Go

I am forever trolling Airbnb to find cool overnight ideas—check out some of our favorite rentals here.

Daydream

Vintage travel ads that, as this cool slideshow puts it, “showcase an era when flying was one of the most glamorous things you could do, when passengers dressed to impress and legroom, well, actually existed”— from our sister pub, Travel + Leisure.

Did you stumble across some great vaca inspiration this week? I’d love to hear about it, in the comments section below.

Happy travels!