By December of 2023, Paul Preston realized that his girlfriend Susan Huckle was a big fan of road trips and lists. So for Christmas, he gave her L.A. Times’ ”101 Best California Experiences” zine, a traveler’s bucket list highlighting my top destinations throughout my four decades of traveling the state.

The gift, I’m delighted to hear, was a hit.

Preston and Huckle went through it and checked off locations they’d seen already. Then they hit the road.

And now, after two and a half years of roaming the state between work assignments, they’re back to report that they’ve covered all 101 locations on that list. Though the two have also traveled beyond state lines, the quest to cover California “totally informed our lives for the last two or three years,” said Huckle, who sent me a note of thanks after ticking the last box.

After the note arrived, I was eager to call them and learn more. I caught the couple, of course, in the middle of a day trip.

“We’re out exploring,” Preston said. “So you’re getting what we’re about.”

They’re also now married. That happened last July in Yosemite Valley, which, yes, was on the list.

Huckle, 41, an actress, a host on “L.A. This Week” on Channel 35, a Universal Studios performer and an author, grew up in Santa Maria on California’s Central Coast.

Preston, 56, is also an actor. He leads movie location tours and hosts podcasts, movie trivia nights and special events. He grew up and went to college on the East Coast, so he had fewer California miles under his belt when the couple met in 2020.

Their California 101 travels began in early 2024 with a trip to Paso Robles, where they saw the green slopes along Highway 46, Morro Rock and the elephant seals at Piedras Blancas near Hearst Castle.

“And then,” Preston said, “we just kept going.”

Some of their most satisfying stops, the two agreed, were places they hadn’t heard of, such as Orange Works in the Central Valley town of Strathmore and Angel Island State Park, sometimes known as the Ellis Island of the West. Huckle called Angel Island “a marriage of natural beauty with great, powerful, historic information.”

By early this year, there were only a few destinations left to check.

In April, they did the Indian Canyons and Sunnylands estate near Palm Springs, the Integratron near Joshua Tree and the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture in Riverside. In June, they rafted the South Fork of the American River, along with stops in Old Sacramento and, last of all, Columbia State Historic Park. Then they made their own favorites lists.

Susan Huckle’s top 10:

Yosemite Valley
Badwater Basin
Mammoth Mountain
Angel Island State Park
Cheech Marin Center
Joshua Tree National Park
American River South Fork
The Marshall Store on Tomales Bay
Santa Cruz Island
Sunnylands

Paul Preston’s top 10:

Yosemite Valley
Hollywood Bowl
Griffith Observatory
Catalina
Mammoth Mountain
American River South Fork
Erick Schats’ Bakery in Bishop
Huntington Library and Gardens
Palm Springs Aerial Tramway
Balboa Park, San Diego

Now that they’ve seen so much of the state, I had questions. For one, which spots not on the list would they have included?

Alcatraz, they agreed. Also, as an admirer of redwoods, Preston liked Calaveras Big Trees State Park. As an avid cyclist, Huckle liked the 22-mile Marvin Braude Bike Trail from Torrance to Pacific Palisades.

And was anything on the list a disappointment?

“The Carmel Mission,” Huckle said quickly. “It’s beautiful and the missions are an important part of California history.” But she said the mission’s account of its own history seemed “whitewashed,” saying little about the Native loss and trauma that historians are increasingly recognizing in accounts of the missions.

Said Huckle: “I was like, ‘C’mon guys, nobody really thinks this any more, right?’”

Now that they’re done with the Times’ “101 Best California Experiences,” what what will shape their next trips?

They have a list for that. Huckle picked up an L.A. guide, Danny Jensen’s “Secret Los Angeles,” and the couple plans to start where the book does, with the Triforium, a many-colored sculpture that went up outside City Hall in 1975 (and once featured music).

After that? Maybe the Faces of Elysian Valley, a traffic circle sculpture that Huckle said “looks like Easter Island in the middle of Cypress Park.”

That will leave only about 138 more destinations in the book to cover.

If anybody can do it, it’s these two.

Back in 2001, Steven Spielberg released an underrated scifi movie named A.I. Artificial Intelligence (yes, the title is a bit redundant). The movie, which loosely borrows from Pinocchio, tells the story of a family who adopts a robotic boy programmed for love, and that robot’s heartbreaking quest to become a real boy.

Much of the technology in A.I. remains elusive. We’re probably not anywhere close to building androids that can convincingly pass as Haley Joel Osment — or Jude Law, for that matter. But some of the AI products imagined in the movie are starting to look surprisingly plausible. Take Teddy, an animatronic teddy bear. Teddy can walk, talk, make decisions, and respond to the needs and emotions of people around him. He’s more than just a toy. He’s an intelligent companion and protector for children.

Today, a slew of technology companies are developing AI companions that sort of resemble Teddy. The most intelligent AI chatbots still live on digital screens, but a wave of startups is giving them bodies — creating dolls, action figures, and robots that can serve as companions for kids.

What happens when kids grow up with AI?

AI is already a part of childhood. Recommendation algorithms curate what many kids watch and listen to. Chatbots stand ready to answer questions like, “Are monsters real?” or “Why is the sky blue?” They can help with homework, tell bedtime stories, or even feel like a friend. And companies are racing to embed AI into toys, nurseries, classrooms, and eventually robots that live alongside families.

In a new book, Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity & Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI, author Dana Suskind grapples with what the rising tide of artificial intelligence means for raising kids. On the one hand, she acknowledges that the technology offers promise as, for example, a productivity enhancer and time saver for parents, a monitoring and research tool that can give parents and scientists valuable data on child development, and an interactive tutor that might help some kids learn.

One of the most magical and underrated natural wonders of the American West is about to unfold across California beaches.

In four-day periods every year from March to August, legions of small, silver fish called grunion ride the waves ashore for mating rituals, beginning on the nights of the full and new moons.

But this isn’t just any fish spawning.

First, the females bury themselves halfway in the sand with only their heads sticking out and lay their eggs. Then, the males wriggle up and twist and wrap around them. It’s a rare and mysterious orgy unfolding in the dead of night. And it’s all out in the open for public viewing.

For some SoCal families, watching the grunion run is an annual summer tradition. There have been several runs already this year, with sightings reported from La Jolla to Ventura. Another is expected to start Tuesday night.

When the grunions will be running

This week’s run is predicted go from Tuesday to Friday.

The fish come up on the sand for about two hours at night, as the high tide starts to ebb, usually between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. The second hour is when the spawning picks up.

The second and third night of the four-night runs tend to be best to see grunion, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The first night, Tuesday night, is the least predictable.

The agency publishes a schedule of what days and times to expect the ritual, based on moon cycles and the timing at San Pedro’s Cabrillo Beach, a known grunion hotspot.

But it all varies.

“The further south that you go, the grunion tend to show up a little bit earlier, and if you go further to the north, they tend to show up a little bit later,” said CDFW environmental scientist Malcolm Tunnell. “We don’t fully understand this. They are a cryptic species.”

Where to see them

Grunion are a native species and only live off the coast of southern California and northern Mexico. Their usual range is from Santa Barbara to Baja California, although it has been shifting north as climate change heats the oceans.

While you can expect to see grunion in SoCal, the exact beaches where they decide to spawn is something of a mystery, depending on the tides, the sands and the conditions encountered by the scout fish grunion send out before they decide where to mate.

“We usually say, if it’s a beach where there’s surfing, they like the same surfing waves that people like,” said Karen Martin, a professor of biology at Pepperdine University and leading grunion expert. “But really, any beach that has a nice, wide area where they can come ashore is a potential beach.”

Martin runs a group where citizen scientists can report observations. She said this year the runs have not been as abundant as in the past, but “there have been some nice ones, even earlier this month.”

The CDFW recommends checking social media and calling local lifeguards to ask if grunions have been spotted. Bait and tackle shops may also be able to point you in the right direction.

What are the rules for catching grunion

Grunion face threats from development on the coast, sea level rise, changes in storm dynamics and hunting, said Martin.

Since the 1920s, populations have shown signs of decline on-and-off. To protect grunion during their peak spawning period, CDFW prohibits fishing from April through June.

The season is open now with a limit of 30 per person; they can only be caught by hand, and anyone over 16 needs to have a fishing license.

Flashlights should be used sparingly, so as not to disrupt them.

“The ideal thing would be to just watch, but if you feel compelled to catch, maybe consider catch and release,” said Martin.

A fish that lives in such a limited geography, she said, needs our care.

“It’s a really remarkable fish.”