Happy Sunday.
Here are a few stories you missed in the California Sun over the last week.
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Sun sampler
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The night sky from Badwater Basin in Death Valley.
Across urban California, the Milky Way is little more than an idea, theoretically arching across the night sky but erased from view by the city lights. There are still pockets of the state, though, where the nights shimmer with countless points of light. Among them is Death Valley, which has made a priority of protecting the darkness, earning the remote park the highest rating from the International Dark-Sky Association. On moonless nights, the Milky Way can be so bright that it casts shadows. KCET included Death Valley in a ranking of the 10 darkest places in California.
The Death Valley Dark Sky Festival is this weekend. Scientists with the James Webb Space Telescope will be among those delivering talks. NPS.
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A 1,300-foot raised walkway has been added through the Grove of Titans.
Max Forster, Save the Redwoods League
In 1998, a pair of explorers discovered a grove of some of the world’s largest redwoods hidden within Del Norte County’s Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. One was as wide as a tennis court. As map coordinates trickled out, the Grove of Titans drew waves of visitors who trampled the trees’ root systems. Now park officials are inviting the public to the grand opening of a newly constructed elevated walkway this May, complete with a staff of “Titaneers” to answer all your redwood questions. Wild Rivers Outpost
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A picture of missing woman Emmilee Risling on a table at the Risling family home in McKinleyville.
Nathan Howard/A.P.
“We’re looking. We’re looking every day.”
Five Native American women have disappeared or been killed along California’s isolated Lost Coast in the past 18 months. The crisis has led the Yurok Tribe to issue an emergency declaration and brought increased urgency to a longstanding but largely ignored epidemic. Native women face murder rates almost three times those of white women overall — and up to 10 times the national average. A.P.
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There’s a mountain town between Lake Tahoe and Yosemite where everyone gets around by snowmobile. Bear Valley, home to roughly 100 permanent residents, receives an average of about 5 feet of snow each winter. When it piles up along the town’s remote unplowed roads, the cars go idle and the snowmobiles roar to life. The TV reporter John Bartell did a fun profile. 👉 ABC10/YouTube (~4 mins)
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Pink trumpet trees have adapted readily to Southern California’s climate.
Kit Leong
The pink trumpet trees are now blossoming across Southern California. Among the showiest trees anywhere, the South American native has trumpet-shaped flowers that peak in early spring with almost unnaturally bright color. Tree enthusiast Stephanie Carrie took note of the pink trumpet explosion in Los Angeles in her Instagram feed Trees Of LA, which she once described as “my small effort to cure ‘tree blindness’ in L.A.”
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AutoCamp Joshua Tree’s clubhouse tries to blur the boundary between indoors and outdoors.
AutoCamp Joshua Tree
The Santa Barbara startup that built a popular luxury campground 30 miles west of Yosemite has now added a location in the Southern California desert. AutoCamp Joshua Tree has 47 Airstreams with small kitchens and high-thread-count linens. Also on the grounds is a midcentury modern Quonset clubhouse with a heated pool and a bar serving craft beer. design boom | Spaces
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For years, the Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee has been writing a series on his favorite works of art in permanent collections around the U.S. — and he just finished his 100th piece. Nine of the artworks are held in California museums, including the Bay Area artist Richard Diebenkorn’s “Seawall” at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, pictured above. Smee described it as “a painting I can imagine mumbling about on my deathbed.” Washington Post
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