California is Venice Beach, with buff bodies and tiny tank tops. No, it's the "hemp highway" between Mendocino and Humboldt counties.
No, it's Death Valley. Fisherman's Wharf? Obviously, it's all of the above and much, much more, as related in the Sacramento Bee columns of travel writer Sam McManis.
A new book collects some of his best columns: Crossing California: A Cultural Topography of a State of Wonder and Weirdness. The author visits with examples of the weird and the wonderful.
