Red Rock Canyon is Otherworldly

Every so often you come across somewhere close to home that's so magnificent it stops you in your tracks, leaving you wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

Red Rock Canyon State Park — where the southernmost tip of the Sierra Nevada meets the El Paso Range and just two hours north of downtown L.A. — is one of those places. The 4,000-acre swath of spectacular desert scenery could easily be a double for the Southwest. Exploration on foot is the main attraction, and camping brings you flush up against the scenery. Here, pleated sandstone cliffs sporting horizontal stripes in hues of pink, orange, tan and dark chocolate soar more than 1,000 feet above a shimmering white-sand basin speckled with Joshua trees, fishhook cactuses and the rare Red Rock tar plant. Volcanic rock six stories high and the gray-black color of weathered asphalt caps the sky-scraping cliffs.

The towering medley of colors and breathtaking rock formations are people magnets. Although there's a well-marked trail that winds from a parking lot up the center of Hagen Canyon, the loveliest in the park, most visitors stray from the path within minutes and hike, scramble or climb up cliffs.