A slice of Danish in California

The first time musician and songwriter Jim Messina (of Loggins and Messina) brought his then-toddler son Julian to Solvang, it was Christmas time. As they pulled off Highway 101 and drove through a forest of old-growth trees, they entered the town and could hardly believe what they saw: hotels, post offices and city buildings with windmills and thatched roofs and bell towers, decorated in bright red, blue, green and yellow - the colours of a children's storybook.

Santa and Mrs Claus roamed the streets, as did horse carriages, dancers in bright petticoats, aprons and clogs, and the occasional Viking trussed up in fur and a horned hat. The father and son walked around the magical town, feasted on fudge, sampled aebleskiver - a famous Danish breakfast treat served with jam or maple syrup - and gazed at the towering pines trussed up with giant Christmas balls.

"Julian believed this is where Santa actually lived," Messina says of his son, now a grown man. The two fell in love with the impossibly sunny North Pole that Solvang represented.

But it was when the pair returned later in the year - when the Christmas baubles and lights were tucked away in their boxes, the candy canes and chocolate Santas cleared from the store windows - that Messina began to see another side of Solvang. He found rolling hills, centuries-old oak trees, thousands of kilometres of horse trails, and a natural waterfall.

"Moving up here put my son and me back in touch with nature and real people," says the songwriter who penned the folk-rock classic Watching the River Run.

It was the kind of country idyll where you could be ordering a burrito and find yourself next to high-profile locals such as actors Cheryl Ladd (of Charlie's Angels fame) and Noah Wylie (ER), singer David Crosby (Crosby, Stills and Nash), or a member of the Chumash Native American tribe.