Insider tips on what to see, where to buy and how to get around ; theme parks, water parks, national parks, the best outdoor activities all over the state.

"After years on the road performing at sold-out venues alongside platinum-selling and Grammy-winning Christian artists, Tyson Motsenbocker returned home to the impending death of his 57-year-old hero and mother. He begged God to heal her, but she died anyway. When they buried her body, Tyson also buried the childhood version of his faith. Weeks before her death, however, Motsenbocker discovered the story of 18th-century Spanish monk St. Junipero Serra...

The Shirley Letters, written from the mining camps in 1851 and 1852, are something valuable and rare -- a portrait by a woman of an era dominated by men. They offer a vivid picture of gold rush life, from accounts of ''murders, fearful accidents, bloody deaths, a mob, whippings, a hanging, an attempt at suicide, and a fatal duel'' to bars lined with ''that eternal crimson calico which flushes the whole social life of the Golden State,'' and the rare...