Hacienda Heights, CA

Colima Road works as the main street of Hacienda Heights, a long boulevard of shopping plazas where bakeries, noodle houses and grocery stores run for miles along the base of the hills. Near the freeway and along Hacienda Boulevard the ground is flat and the blocks are regular, filled with postwar ranch houses and small apartment complexes close to the shops. Farther up the slope the streets begin to curve, the lots get bigger, and the houses from later decades sit with views across the San Gabriel Valley. Those hills are the local backyard. The Hacienda Hills Trailhead on Orange Grove Avenue leads onto fire roads through the preserve, where morning walkers climb for views of the valley and the mountains beyond. On the hillside above Glenmark Drive, Hsi Lai Temple opens its courtyards and gardens to visitors. Four Sea on South Hacienda Boulevard serves a traditional breakfast of salty soy milk, turnip cake and hand-wrapped pastries, and Tasty Noodle House on South Azusa Avenue focuses on Shanghai-style noodle soups. The plazas along Colima Road hold bubble tea, hot pot and several bakery chains, and their parking lots fill fast at weekend lunch. Daily errands mean a car, since the curving upper streets were built for driving and the grocery stores sit down on the boulevards. The larger tradeoff is governance. Evenings in Hacienda Heights often follow the same pattern, with a walk up the hill before sunset and dinner down on Colima Road afterward.