Lee Foster writes about and recommends the best nature/outdoors attractions and the best cultural travel experiences in Northern California.

He helps a local or a visitor make informed travel decisions for visiting places as diverse as Yosemite National Park, the intriguing Russian fort at Fort Ross along the Sonoma coast, or the wondrous Big Sur Coast.

What are the best travel options to explore when contemplating Northern California? Lee Foster has spent 40 years refining the answers.

Lee’s 30 chapters in this book guide consumers to use wisely their most precious commodity—their time.

Lee presents his vision of Northern California travel in the various modes that a consumer might find useful—as a 284-page printed book, as an ebook with color photos, and on his website as write-up/slideshow elements at http://fostertravel.com. (Search Norcal to see all the book chapters). Eventually the content will also be organized as an app.

The goal is to provide an enjoyable and insightful read for the armchair traveler and an actionable plan ready to go for an actual trip.

Lee’s strategy is to divide Northern California into a finite number of major subjects, such as Lake Tahoe, and offer a write-up, plus If You Go suggestions. This basic write-up may be supplemented with a more specialized Further Options set of tips. This approach allows an elasticity for incremental and timely additions to the subjects.

A consumer has many sources of information about Northern California travel, but Lee Foster’s content is superior for several reasons:

*Lee makes insightful judgments that help a traveler use precious travel time wisely. His only responsibility is to the consumer. He doesn’t write about everything, only the best things. He has no need to promote anything beyond what he considers the best possible consumer experience.

*Visitor Bureau and Destination organization promotional travel content can be helpful and is sometimes energetically presented, but such offerings must often give equal time to all dues-paying members. Lee can select and promote only the best consumer experiences in a destination, which is what a consumer wants.

*Crowd-sourced travel information, such as Yelp or TripAdvisor, can be lively and useful, but such reports are subject to planted bias, competitor sabotage, and the exuberance or idiosyncratic negativity of the amateur. Lee provides a perspective from a veteran travel journalist who has only his audience’s interest in mind.

*Other travel guides are heavy with data, but Lee wonders if that is useful in the Internet era when a Google Search can resolve quickly all the pedestrian facts, such as address, hours open, and prices. Instead, Lee concentrates on inspiration and judgment to help the potential traveler make wise decisions.

Lee Foster has personally visited the places and lived out the experiences that he recommends. He compares the places/experiences against his lifetime record of numerous other parallel options in Northern California and elsewhere.

Lee becomes your “personal travel concierge” with a distillation of the essence of the destination.

Lee’s coverages do not adhere to a rigid formula. The question is: what is the essence of this destination? Often, a good option for lodging and dining is offered to make the trip memorable. His expertise also points out the not-so-obvious and hidden delights that a traveler might otherwise miss.

Lee Foster

Books