After spending late summer in a picturesque town in the Pacific Northwest, I'm eager to get home to California and enjoy the sunshine and warm weather. But it's not just the climate that I miss. There's something fabulous about our varied scenery. The drive past Mount Shasta and into the Central Valley always stirs my heart. And I love the spirit of California, with its diversity of people, cuisine and cultures—as well as its fascinating Gold Rush history.
The state always beckoned me, so much so that when I was offered a job in Orange County in the 1990s I accepted it immediately and then had to break the news to my shell-shocked wife. Even then, the home prices were daunting compared to the rest of the country—an imbalance that only has gotten more pronounced in the ensuing 25 years as slow-growth regulations took hold and led to a consistent underbuilding of new housing units.
