Auburn, Benicia, Folsom, Lodi and Truckee: five Northern California gems you’ll want to visit this summer. 

By the end of 2018, Sacramento’s restaurant industry was reeling. That year, close to 20 industry workers — servers, chefs, bartenders and others — died from suicide or behaviors related to drug or alcohol use. In the last month of the year alone, four workers lost their lives.

Nestled squarely in the midst of dozens of award-winning wineries that make Amador County’s Shenandoah Valley so unique, Amador Flower Farm in Plymouth is home to something different — an eye-popping 1,300 varieties of daylily.

In a county known for its wealth of Gold Rush-era museums, undoubtedly some of the most compelling stories from that time reside at a former orphanage hidden within the 160-year-old walls of the Grass Valley Museum.

With Sacramento nearly 400 miles from Hollywood and an increasing number of films shot in Georgia for tax purposes, the Capital Region doesn’t frequently host productions. But when it happens, people can get excited.

It’s the first night back after Lotus Pub’s annual two-week holiday break, and at 5 p.m. when the doors swing open on this frigid Friday in January, a line has already formed.

Jan Gregory, a banker, passed away in May in Sacramento. Five days later, the front page of the Sacramento Bee announced that the Sacramento Zoo had acquired a rare white rhinoceros named J. Gregory.