Economic indicators may be sagging, but erotic indicators appear to be up, up, up–reassuring news to celebrate on Valentine’s Day.

Planning a trip? Medex, which sells travel health insurance, also offers advice on how to stay safe. A few of the ideas in their latest email are so clever we had to pass them on.

Wherever you travel, it’s worth checking out the local farmers market, not only to cast your vote for a vital local agriculture but to get a grassroots sense of the place and its people. Here’s a special report from one of our favorites.

Sweeping vistas, icons of boom-and-bust history, and a half day’s worth of gallery hopping and browsing, plus trails to seaside bluffs, a gentle beach, and shady woods—not too bad for a lane just five blocks long.

Like its 150 year old courthouse, Mariposa, located about 40 miles northeast of Merced on Highway 140, balances the past and present with grace.

California’s Clear Lake fulfills a landscape painter’s fantasy with vistas of rippling blue water and springtime displays of redbud and pear blossoms. Two hours north of San Francisco, it feels a world away.