George Rose / GettyYosemite Valley, including Half Dome, Clouds Rest, Bridalveil Fall, and El Capitan, viewed from Tunnel View after a brief rainstorm cleared on March 27, 2025, in Yosemite National Park, CaliforniaGeorge Rose / GettyHeavy rains arrived in Santa Barbara County wine country, filling the creeks and streams and turning the hillsides a vivid green as viewed on January 20, 2023, near Santa Ynez, California. Following the notoriety from the Academy Award–winning film Sideways, this farming region north of Santa Barbara has become a popular wine-country stop for global and domestic tourists traveling between San Francisco and Los Angeles.George Rose / GettyA farmworker rides a horse through the neighborhood backstreets in Los Alamos, California, on January 30, 2016.George Rose / GettyThe downtown high-rises are viewed at sunrise from the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area in the Baldwin Hills Mountains on February 7, 2022, in Los Angeles, California.George Rose / GettyA group of surfers catches the same wave in this photo taken from the pier in Pismo Beach, California, on August 21, 2015.George Rose / GettyPinot noir vineyards in the famed Sta. Rita Hills AVA (American Viticultural Area) turn a vivid red, orange, and yellow, signaling the end of the grape harvest and approach of winter, as viewed on November 26, 2023, near Buellton, California.George Rose / GettyDiscovery Bay, a waterfront community of 15,000 people built on a network of man-made dikes and surrounded by fresh water, is viewed from the air on May 22, 2023, over Discovery Bay, California.George Rose / GettyA woman photographs the Golden Gate Bridge and approaching bank of heavy fog on February 13, 2014, in San Francisco, California.George Rose / GettyVisitors to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park take in Galleta Meadows, a sculpture garden by the artist and welder Ricardo Breceda, on March 6, 2019, in Borrego Springs, California.George Rose / GettyEarly-morning light shines on Emerald Bay in South Lake Tahoe, California, on October 26, 2022.George Rose / GettyFollowing record winter rains, colorful poppies and other wildflowers appeared in the Antelope Valley Poppy Preserve one hour north of Los Angeles, drawing visitors to a “super bloom” on March 31, 2019, near Lancaster, California.George Rose / GettyTrees stand along the Merced River, coated in white after a major storm dumped a foot of snow in Yosemite Valley on December 16, 2021, in Yosemite National Park.George Rose / GettyElephant seals gather on the beach at the Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery on February 21, 2019, south of the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse and just north of San Simeon, California.George Rose / GettyLake Oroville, California’s second-largest water reservoir, stood at a historically low level during a drought, seen on September 1, 2021, near Oroville, California.George Rose / GettyA large oak tree is silhouetted against the early-morning sky as the sun comes up on December 26, 2021, near Santa Ynez, California, in Santa Barbara County’s wine country.George Rose / GettyAn In-N-Out Burger restaurant adjacent to a runway at Los Angeles International Airport has become a favorite Instagram spot to photograph jets as they land, seen on February 7, 2022, in Los Angeles.George Rose / GettyThe Sierra Nevada Mountains, viewed from the scenic Alabama Hills at sunrise on April 6, 2017, near Lone Pine. Owens Valley is an arid valley in eastern California, to the east of the Sierra Nevadas and west of the White Mountains and Inyo Mountains on the west edge of the Great Basin.George Rose / GettySmoke from a controlled burn produces a haze above the Merced River, seen in the early-morning hours before sunrise on October 28, 2021, in Yosemite National Park.George Rose / GettyMore than 58,000 fiber-optic spheres cover a rolling hillside and gully in a “made for social media” Field of Light at Sensorio on June 1, 2019, near Paso Robles.George Rose / GettyA large grass-and-timber fire, the Lake Fire, dominates the horizon in Santa Barbara County’s Santa Ynez Valley, viewed from a nearby vineyard on July 6, 2024.George Rose / GettyTourists flock to patches of aspens, cottonwoods, and maple trees that turn bright red, yellow, and gold along Bishop Creek Canyon and in the canyons of North Lake, Lake Sabrina, and South Lake, near Bishop, California, on October 9, 2021.George Rose / GettyA mixture of snow, rain, and sand moves across Death Valley on March 2, 2023, near Furnace Creek, California.George Rose / GettyA large statue of a Brontosaurus stands at the Cabazon Dinosaur roadside attraction off Interstate 10, seen on May 11, 2022.George Rose / GettyA farmer riding a tractor cleans out weeds in an old-vine zinfandel vineyard near Healdsburg, California, on March 22, 2022.George Rose / GettyHeavy surf created by a large storm in the Gulf of Alaska sent huge waves crashing along the coastal rocks and shoreline near the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse on February 4, 2016.
