Recreation Area

Not all Southland swimming beaches line the Pacific shore. High in the San Bernardino Mountains you'll find summer swimmers and sunbathers flocking to Silverwood Lake. Surrounded by forest scenery, the 3,380-foot-high lake also attracts boaters, water skiers and fishing folk. It's the focal point of a state recreation area where hikers, bicyclists, picnickers and campers are welcome, too. The man-made lake's main purpose is not for recreation but as a reservoir for the state's aqueduct system.

The stats Distance: 1.1 miles (for the loop around the lake) Duration: 40 minutes Difficulty: 1 (on a scale of 1 to 5) Details: No dogs allowed. Wheelchair accessible. Bus: Routes 164, 236 and Woodley Station on Metro Orange Line.

Heading to Griffith Park through an equestrian tunnel under the 134 Freeway, horse riders emerge to an unusual sight: huge yellow earth movers chomping into 15 acres of dirt between the freeway and the park. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is building underground reservoirs that will hold 110 million gallons of water and help eliminate the city's reliance on open-air reservoirs, including Silver Lake Res- ervoir. When complete, the two side-by-side Headworks reservoirs will be hidden beneath a new open-space recreation area along For- est Lawn Drive near Zoo Drive.

"There's no there there" is how Gertrude Stein famously summed up and put down Oakland, her old hometown. For the Music Center, which manages much of the prime cultural real estate in downtown Los Angeles, the problem has long been the opposite: There's too much "there" there. To the public, by and large, the glamorous hilltop place known as the Music Center overshadows the identically named but ill-defined organization that's been in charge of venue logistics since it opened as the city's performing arts hub 48 years ago. The glory at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Mark Taper Forum, the Ahmanson Theatre and REDCAT accrues mainly to the impresarios who put on the shows.

The stats Distance: 1.1 miles (for the loop around the lake) Duration: 40 minutes Difficulty: 1 (on a scale of 1 to 5) Details: No dogs allowed. Wheelchair accessible. Bus: Routes 164, 236 and Woodley Station on Metro Orange Line.

The popular Hungry Valley recreation area for off-road vehicles is closed temporarily while repairs to roads and trails damaged by the recent tropical storms are being made, officials said Tuesday. Recent heavy rainfall and early snowmelt have caused dirt roads and off-road vehicle trails in the area, which straddles Ventura and Los Angeles counties near Gorman, to become washed out or deeply rutted, creating unsafe conditions for public use, officials said.

Your editorial, "An Oasis in the Northeast Valley," (Jan. 4) lauds the building of a swimming lake and a dinky "boating lake" in the Hansen Dam area as "restoring a once-popular park--and turning around a community that has suffered a long, slow slide into disrepair." These lakes are not, as many believed, a replacement of the old lake. The swimming lake will stand as an idle nuisance eight months of the year. And, as a resident of Lake View Terrace for 39 years, I disagree that it has had "a slide into disrepair" and I resent it. I'd prefer that Lake View Terrace remain the way it is, not attracting the expected thousands.

Indian lore, Hollywood sets, Shakespeare and close encounters with nature are among the activities in store for August in the Santa Monica Mountains. Entertainment at the Peter Strauss Ranch will include a traveling troupe performing "A Midsummer Night's Dream" from 2 to 4 p.m. Aug. 6; Buzzworld, an Irish instrumental and vocal group, giving a 2 p.m. concert Aug. 13; and an evening of 1940s dance and music at 5 p.m. Aug. 19. Admission to the events is free.

Reporting from the Providence Mountains State Recreation Area, Calif. There's Down Under, like the story on New Zealand on the left side of this page, and then there's down under. I chose the latter. Like that journey, my trip to the Providence Mountains State Recreation Area, about four hours east of Los Angeles, introduced me to a world I'd never experienced. And because this is California, the colorful subterranean wonderland of the area's Mitchell Caverns come with a story that's tailor-made for the movies.

The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is taking applications for volunteers to work on research projects and other areas of park operation. Training will begin in the fall, according to the National Park Service, which runs the recreation area--a network of mountain preserves extending from Griffith Park in Los Angeles to Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County.

Re "An alpine creek that reeks," Sept. 30 My parents were born in the San Gabriel Valley, my father in 1928 and my mother in 1932. My grandfather helped to build the road through the San Gabriel Canyon during the Depression; his family lived in camps along the road as it was built. Needless to say, this was my father's playground as a child; as an adult, he introduced us to the beauty and wonders of the San Gabriel Mountains. We spent many wonderful weekends camping at Crystal Lake, cooking Sunday breakfast over a campfire.

Atop his chocolate mare JJ, Rene Herrera follows a dirt path from Gabrielino Equestrian Park on the eastern end of Hansen Dam Recreation Area to a nearby creek shaded by cottonwoods. Families with coolers and bags of food have beaten Herrera and two other horse riders there, seeking refuge in the wooded waterside from temperatures in the 90s. While a dozen children splash around in a swimming hole, the adults kick back in hammocks and camp chairs, eating grilled chicken and shooting the breeze.

SACRAMENTO - California officials said Friday that only one park will be closed come Sunday, revising plans announced a day earlier to cease operations at five parks. Providence Mountains State Recreation Area, in a remote part of San Bernardino County, has been shut down since earlier this year and will remain so. But the revised plan means four sites expected to close on Sunday - Benicia State Recreation Area, the California Mining and Mineral Museum, Gray Whale Cove State Beach and Zmudowski State Beach - will keep operating for the time being.

After Margot Feuer moved to the hills of Malibu in 1965, she was "catapulted into community action" by the threat of development in the surrounding Santa Monica Mountains. The terrifying proposals included building a nuclear power plant in an isolated canyon and a freeway through Malibu Canyon. "I looked around at what I was in the middle of," she later said, "and I figured, gosh, the idea of a park is a beautiful idea. " Hundreds would join her in the movement to create a national park in Los Angeles, but only Feuer and two other activists would be recognized as "the founding mothers" of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which won federal approval in 1978.

SALTON SEA STATE RECREATION AREA - During the heyday of the Salton Sea, when the Hollywood crowd and others came to play in large numbers, this strip of beaches, campsites and fishing spots along the sea's northern shore was one of California's most popular parks. But that was years ago. The popularity of the recreation area has plummeted in recent decades, and now the area is on a list of parks to be closed because of the state's financial woes. Unlike other parks slated for closure, this one may never come back, park officials said.

Rough and rocky, Johnson Valley is considered the perfect place to test the mettle of men and their machines. An estimated 200,000 people a year flock to the desert valley for recreational pursuits: hiking, camping, rock-hounding, star-gazing and a new sport called "geocaching," a treasure hunt using GPS technology. Moviemakers use the desert floor for chase scenes. But the valley has gained its greatest acclaim in recent years as an untamed, unregulated venue for off-road vehicles.

Heading to Griffith Park through an equestrian tunnel under the 134 Freeway, horse riders emerge to an unusual sight: huge yellow earth movers chomping into 15 acres of dirt between the freeway and the park. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is building underground reservoirs that will hold 110 million gallons of water and help eliminate the city's reliance on open-air reservoirs, including Silver Lake Res- ervoir. When complete, the two side-by-side Headworks reservoirs will be hidden beneath a new open-space recreation area along For- est Lawn Drive near Zoo Drive.

Find out about historic and scenic sites as well as programs, fees and directions to California's national parks, monuments and recreation areas: Alcatraz Island, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Fort Mason, B201, San Francisco, CA 94123; (415) 561-4900 or (415) 981-7625 (tickets), http://www.nps.gov/alca or http://www.alcatrazcruises.com . Cabrillo National Monument, 1800 Cabrillo Memorial Drive, San Diego, CA 92106; (619) 557-5450, fax (619) 226-6311, http://www.nps.gov/cabr . California National Historic Trail, 324 S. State St., Suite 200, Box 30, Salt Lake City, UT 84111; (801)