Recreation Areas

Go island hopping in San Francisco Bay on a getaway package that includes lodging, food and ferry rides. The deal: The Angel Island package, with a starting rate of $169 per night, double occupancy, includes overnight accommodations at the Lodge at Tiburon, breakfast, parking, round-trip ferry tickets to Angel Island State Park, all-day bike rentals and lunch. The island: Angel Island, hilly and tree-covered, is the largest island in San Francisco Bay.

Four dozen sweating men shoved themselves into a hot airless room recently trying to win something almost as rare as the big prize in the California Lottery--practice time on one of the city's soccer fields. There are thousands of organized soccer players in Los Angeles, but only 55 fields for them to play on. And so each year, the city holds a soccer lottery to determine who gets the best practice times--and who gets to practice at all.

California's vast park system, once considered one of the finest in the world, is "falling apart" as drastic fee increases have driven away users and years of neglect have forced it to forgo essential maintenance, a blue-ribbon committee finds in a new report. As summer begins, a financial crisis in the system raises the possibility that many parks could close--some as early as July 1, the height of the visitor season--and others could be forced to operate at reduced hours.

A year ago, officials here went out to inspect the parkland that Orange County transferred to Mission Viejo as it was approaching cityhood. What they found was not all suitable for tot lots or ball diamonds. There were oddly shaped parcels of land winding up hillsides and plunging into ravines. One 15-acre "park" consisted of an acre of flat land and 14 acres of vertical slopes surrounding two huge water tanks. "Sure, I'd like to have more usable flat land and space for ball fields," said Jim E.

Every weekday morning, Phyllis Hines takes an hourlong walk in her scenic neighborhood, past crowing roosters, grazing horses and wild vegetation. This working-class community of about 20,000 residents--better known for the 1991 Rodney King beating than its world-class equestrian center--is quietly undergoing an image transformation that has longtime residents like Hines thrilled.

For most children living behind the Civic Center in a neighborhood known as the 15th Street apartments, going to the park to run, play games and just be outside is a luxury they rarely get to experience. But this summer, the fun and games came to them in a white van that delivered balls, a portable basketball hoop, checkers and a "lawn" of green Astroturf three times a week to this low-income neighborhood.

Standing on a cliff at the 5,700-foot peak of Mt. Wilson, Dick Snyder peered into the sky at a few wispy clouds hovering above the mountains, ran toward the edge and dove off. Dangling beneath an aluminum and Dacron hang glider, he drifted in the air above the sprawling San Gabriel Valley, an unbroken carpet of suburban tracts, high-voltage power lines and roads. Shifting his weight, Snyder dropped down, aiming for a postage-stamp-size landing site nestled in the stew of suburban development.

The U.S. Forest Service, the agency with jurisdiction over Convict Lake, has set no standards for ice thickness, air temperature or other conditions to be met before the public is allowed to venture onto the frozen lake, a spokesman for the Forest Service said Tuesday.

Don Brown learned his lesson the hard way, after paddling out into the river with his grandson in a cheap rubber canoe. "We got about a half-mile downstream and it got wrapped around a tree, and we had to get off and head to shore," he said. They are fortunate to be alive. The mighty Kern River, born high in the southern Sierra and grown to a torrent raging down the canyons toward Bakersfield, isn't always so forgiving of those foolish enough to go in ill prepared.

From rocky tide pools off Dana Point to bubbling mountain streams in the Cleveland National Forest, conservationists in Orange County are struggling to balance two key but conflicting goals: protecting delicate habitats while allowing the public to enjoy them. Similar problems have bedeviled land management officials across the region.