Life in California is full of head-scratching queries—like, Is it ever a charming fall season here, or do we just jump straight from summer to winter? So Alta Journal has enlisted two experts to answer your pressing questions: Stacey Grenrock Woods and Gustavo Arellano, both of whom bring decades of hard-won knowledge and laser-sharp insights into the Golden State.
Have a question of your own? Ask a Californian!
We spent a long weekend this summer in beautiful Yosemite National Park, and I was shocked to find flecks of gold in the Merced River. Are they worth anything?
—Getting My Pan Ready
Stacey: What incredible luck! Now you don’t have to schlep back to Yosemite with a pan, a sieve, a pickax, a sluice box, a suction dredge, or a frontier dialect to strike it rich. The flecks in them thar river probably weren’t gold, and even if they were, removing them would violate at least a hundred of the thousand rules of Yosemite. Most likely, those were flecks of iron pyrite, otherwise known as fool’s gold, or mica, which I’m going to call fool’s iron pyrite. But don’t feel foolish. You’ve learned the most important lesson any Californian can: All that glitters is not gold. If it were, we’d be slapping it under our eyes. Now take off those long johns and turn off your headlamp. Eureka!
Gustavo: Well, aren’t we Californians all golden, if you really get down to it? I’m going to be more charitable than my dear co-columnista and assume those glitters you found were indeed gold. Stacey is right that you can’t remove any minerals from Yosemite no matter how microscopic—but given our current presidential administration, give it a few months for them to change their minds, or just be a tech bro and do whatever you want as long as you involve crypto and AI. And wouldn’t you know it, the Bureau of Land Management signed off in April on a Canadian company that wants to do exploratory drilling for gold near Death Valley, despite the protests of Native American tribes and environmentalists. Get your pack mules ready, O Argonauts!
It’s back-to-school season, and my kids’ school restrictions around lunches have grown even more, forgive me, uptight. All nuts are now prohibited (sunbutter is suggested in place of peanut or almond butter), as are “fiery snacks” and chocolate. Obviously, sharing a snack with a fellow student is out of the question. Is this a West Coast thing?
—Salads for Seven-Year-Olds
Stacey: You can’t blame us for the nut ban and the no-sharing policy—those are pretty standard across the country. And while California is the state with the strictest school-lunch policies, they apply only to food made and served by the school. Teachers are not allowed to inspect lunch boxes and say, “Ew, is that enriched wheat flour?” and send kids home with a note and some sourdough starter. However, individual school districts do have the right to get together, likely under the cover of darkness, and come up with all kinds of new guidelines just to annoy you and impress Michael Pollan. “Sunbutter” definitely sounds like something only a Californian would make you eat. I bet if sunbutter tried to go to school anywhere else, it would get the crap beat out of it. And I don’t even know what “fiery snacks” are. You and your kids have my sympathy. If peanut butter hadn’t been allowed at my school, I’d have starved.
Gustavo: “Fiery snacks” can mean only one thing: Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, the crunchy-cheesy sticks that are about as spicy as celery but that kids have loved for a good 30 years for one reason and one reason only: Eating them annoys the olds. School districts across the country have banned Flamin’ Hots and their caliente cousins—Takis chips, Tajín dressing, and Pica Limón powder candy, to name the most famous—for almost as long because teachers don’t like their wannabe Kindles gummed up with purple-orange dust and school nurses are sick of telling panicked parents that the reason their kids are pooping multicolored, well, poop is because of the synthetic coloring in those snacks. Classic K–12 educator thinking: Obsess over what kids are eating while not saying a thing as standardized tests rot their brains.
I don’t get the appeal of Disneyland. The lines are ridiculous, the mobile app system is time-consuming and distracts from fun, and the cost is prohibitive for most of us. What’s California’s most underappreciated amusement park?
—Read for Roller Coasters
Stacey: I went to Disneyland recently, only because it was on someone else’s dime and that person was also manning the mobile app. As I walked around the park, dodging hordes of Disney adults, I thought, “Jeez, I wish people would stop treating me to all-expenses-paid trips to coveted places, especially when the Haunted House is closed for repairs.” But then I went on Space Mountain, and the minute it was over (way too soon), I said what I say every time: “Let’s go again!” California has no “underappreciated” amusement parks. They’re all expensive, complicated, and crowded, so you might as well go to Disneyland. It’s still there. You just have to look between all the Mandalorian merch.
Gustavo: Stacey lives a rock star life so thus can live it up at the Happiest Place on Earth gratis; my free tickets could afford me only a few hours at Disney California Adventure, where the World of Color water show featuring second-rate Pixar movies sucked and the line to enter the ride based on Cars looked like the queue for gas at Costco, except not as fun (at least the food and drinks at Lamplight Lounge were legit good). I get motion sickness on all rides unless they’re as slow as It’s a Small World, so I wouldn’t know what California’s most underappreciated amusement park is—but my vote would’ve gone to the late, not-great Family Fun Center in Anaheim, where I worked as a high schooler. Nothing like seeing adult men bribe ride attendants so they can sit in the fastest go-kart and then get mad when some middle school jerk cuts them off and makes them spin out and want their bribe back.
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Stacey Grenrock Woods is a regular contributor to Esquire and a former correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She writes and consults on various TV shows, and has a recurring role as Tricia Thoon on Fox’s Arrested Development. Her first book is I, California.
Gustavo Arellano is the author of Orange County: A Personal History and Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. In 2025, Arellano was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his work as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He was formerly editor of OC Weekly, an alternative newspaper in Orange County, California, and penned the award-winning ¡Ask a Mexican!, a nationally syndicated column in which he answered any and all questions about America’s spiciest and largest minority. Arellano is the recipient of awards ranging from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Best Columnist to the Los Angeles Press Club President’s Award to an Impact Award from the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and he was recognized by the California Latino Legislative Caucus with a 2008 Spirit Award for his “exceptional vision, creativity, and work ethic.” Arellano is a lifelong resident of Orange County and is the proud son of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.
