Escondido — Spanish for "hidden" — sits inland from the San Diego coast in a broad valley between rolling hills of chaparral and avocado orchards. Thirty miles north of downtown San Diego, it is best known as the gateway to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, the 1,800-acre open-range wildlife preserve that is one of the most impressive animal parks in the United States. Most visitors arrive for the Safari Park and leave the same day, which is understandable but misses the point.
The city's other great surprise is Queen Califia's Magical Circle, a free outdoor sculpture garden in Kit Carson Park designed by Niki de Saint Phalle as her final major work. It is extraordinary — mosaicked and mirrored and vivid in the California sun — and entirely unknown to most tourists. The California Center for the Arts brings a full performing arts programme to what might otherwise seem an unlikely location for culture.
Stone Brewing, one of the defining American craft breweries, has its world headquarters here, and the bistro and gardens attached to the brewery are worth a visit in their own right. The area around Grand Avenue downtown has decent restaurants and an emerging independent scene. Southwest of town, Lake Hodges offers hiking, cycling, and birdwatching in a landscape that feels surprisingly remote for San Diego County.