Santa Clarita, CA

Santa Clarita fills the valley just north of the Newhall Pass, the gap where Interstate 5 and State Route 14 part ways on their way out of the Los Angeles basin. Newhall is the old town, with small bungalows near Main Street and a restored commercial strip that now carries restaurants and wine rooms. Saugus spreads up Bouquet and Seco canyons in ranch and split-level tracts, and Canyon Country mixes older subdivisions with horse property in Sand Canyon and the new transit village at Vista Canyon. Santa Clarita keeps about 80 miles of trails on top of its paseos, with the Santa Clara River Trail as the spine, so a morning run can cross half of town without a stoplight. Central Park in Saugus has the ballfields and a dog park, William S. Brewery Draconum on Main Street in Newhall pours its own beer in a beer garden that fills on weekends, and Wolf Creek Restaurant & Brewing in Valencia has done the same with a lodge feel since 1997. The coffee people bring up is Bodhi Leaf Coffee Traders on Soledad Canyon Road, which roasts its beans daily. Errands mostly happen by car along the canyon roads, with Valencia Town Center as the big shopping draw. Metrolink stops at four stations across the valley for trips into Burbank and downtown Los Angeles. The Newhall Pass is the everyday cost. Almost every drive toward Los Angeles squeezes through that one interchange, and a normal commute can run long. Back home, though, an evening walk along a paseo, under the roads and past a village park, is the part of the day the whole plan was drawn for.