PAST PERFECT : The Good Old Days Are Alive and Well . . . if You Just Know Where to Look

A customer bends over the marble counter of a 101-year-old soda fountain to sip a malted milkshake.

A rider ties his mount at a hitching post outside a rust-red barn to see if the saddle maker inside can refit his saddle.

Mesa grande mission bread bakes to a tender brown in a pastoral town near the Vallecito Mountains.

These are the sights and smells of California’s past, and, if you knew where to look, its present.

In our efforts to keep up with a world in which change seems to be the only constant, we sometimes forget about yesterday. But with the turn of the century approaching, it behooves us to take another look at the past, to drink in some of the sights and smells of a simpler era.

Short but Rewarding Trips

Go south, for example, and you’ll discover an old-fashioned bathhouse, cinnamon-scented hot apple pie and a saddle maker who still hand-tools his own leather.

Go west if it’s a sugar factory, a stagecoach relay station, or a Santa Maria-style steak you’re after.

All are located just a couple of hours from bustling Los Angeles so you’ll be back in your 20th-Century beds by nightfall.

And on the way, keep in mind what Harry S. Truman once said: “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.”

If you’re headed south, there’s a lot to see in one day. You may want to pick two or three stops and save the others for another weekend.

Begin in Lake Elsinore, off Interstate 15. It is here, at the old Crescent Bathhouse, that thousands of visitors used to soak away their aches and pains in porcelain tubs filled with 132-degree mineral water. The spring dried up in 1945, but current owners Lory and Wilma Watts have spent 17 years restoring the immense, two-story, Moorish-style building to its original grandeur.

Now called the Chimes, it functions as a museum, housing one of the most impressive arrays of collectibles in Southern California. “I dug this out of a quickbed in Texas,” said Lory Watts, a retired nautical engineer, pointing to a 20-inch-long fossilized snail. “I have 32 vintage cars, including a 1930 American Austin I’ve kept in the garage since 1953. But I don’t sell those. They’re just for fun.”

The Chimes, 201 W. Graham Ave., Lake Elsinore, listed in the National Registry of Historic Places since 1975, is open weekends: Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tours for groups of eight or more are provided during the week. For reservations call (714) 674-3456.

From Lake Elsinore, take Interstate 15 to California 79 East through the tiny ranch communities of Aguanga, Oak Grove and Warner Springs until you reach Santa Ysabel, home of Dudley’s Bakery. But be warned: The plain stucco building is often surrounded by pickup trucks and tour buses bearing visitors eager to sample some of the finest bread in the region.

Original owner Dudley Pratt reportedly trekked through Europe acquiring recipes for his breads and pastries before opening the store in 1963. Pratt died in 1975, but bakers who worked closely with him have since pieced the recipes together. At its peak, the bakery produces 25,000 loaves of bread a week, including mesa grande mission bread, inspired by the fathers of the old Spanish missions.

Dudley’s Bakery, 30218 California 78 (where it meets California 79) , Santa Ysabel, is open Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m.-5 p.m.

From Santa Ysabel, drive 7 miles east to the enchanting community of Julian, population 2,000. Reminiscent of Walnut Grove, the fictional setting of the television series “Little House on the Prairie,” Julian is so quaint “some people stop at the chamber of commerce to see if they have to pay admission,” said Billie Rasmussen, a Julian resident for 34 years.

“This isn’t Disneyland,” she added. “It’s a real, live town where you can yell out your window and say hello to your neighbor. We’re slow-paced.”

Indeed, Julian’s building codes are tougher than parboiled rawhide. Fast-food joints and traffic jams are as alien as $3 bills.

“If you want to build something, ask God first,” Rasmussen said.

Ever since Julian was discovered by gold diggers in 1869, the main drag has been called simply Main Street. You’ll find a 101-year-old drugstore serving malted milks in stainless-steel containers, and Julian Lumber, which sells pot-bellied stoves. The Victorian-style Julian Hotel, built in 1897, is listed in the National Registry of Historic Places and features rooms with four-poster beds and antique lace curtains.

But apples are the town’s claim to fame. “We had a good crop this year,” Rasmussen said, “so you better believe every oven in town will be baking them.” The Julian Pie Co., with a porch swing in the back of the shop, serves up an especially good apple pie.

Mom’s Pie House is another favorite local hangout.

Rasmussen advises visitors to look for signs advertising special events, such as dinners and dances. And that’s not hard to do, given the town is only four square blocks.

“We don’t plan too far in advance,” Rasmussen noted. “We never know what the weather will be like, and our town hall just burned down, so it’s not that easy to organize.”

The Julian Pie Co . , 2225 Main St., Julian, is open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Resuming the drive on California 79, you will pass Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, home of the Green Valley Museum, Old Stonewall Mine and 6,500-foot-high Cuyamaca Peak.

“It’s a very pretty drive, but we don’t suggest driving while it’s snowing,” Ranger Homer Townsend said. “The roads can be treacherous, especially in the morning when there’s ice.” Call (619) 765-0755 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. for a weather report.

Following California 79’s twists and turns for 15 miles, you will eventually reach Descanso and the rustic, red Merigan Ranch Barn complex. Formerly an auction barn, it is now home to McClintock’s Saddleworks.

Gary McClintock, a saddle maker for the past 15 years, makes saddles the old-fashioned way. He starts with a wooden “tree,” four pieces of fir wood glued together to form the skeleton of the saddle, then covers it with bullhide and Hermann Oak saddle leather handtooled with a swivel knife. The only “modern” tool he uses is a 1911 Landis sewing machine.

McClintock learned his craft in Eugene, Ore., and you can watch him work in the comfortable workroom at the back of his shop. Saddles with names such as High Desert Roper, Diamond Buck and Carroll Cutback range from $600 to $4,000 and take from seven to eight months to make. Also in stock are spurs, chaps, canteens, saddlebags and other riding gear.

McClintock’s Saddleworks, 25077 Veijas Blvd., Descanso, is open Saturday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.

Lose your fruit press? Misplace your clothes wringer?

You’ll find both at San Diego Hardware Store, along with some 499,998 other gadgets, including pitcher pumps, cast-iron stoves and “stuff nobody else sells,” Bill Haynesworth said.

Haynesworth runs the family business that his great-great uncle, Fred Gazlay, started in 1892. In 1922, the store was moved to its present site between Fourth and Fifth avenues, where it occupies an entire block.

“We still have the same sheet-metal ceilings, we display much of our merchandise in 4-foot-high cabinets, and we still heat the place with a wood-burning stove,” Haynesworth said. “People really like the musty basement, where we keep the chicken wire and the nuts and bolts, because you can hear the customers one flight above, clumping around like a herd of cattle.”

San Diego Hardware Store, 840 5th Ave ., San Diego. Open Saturday, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. From Interstate 8 out of Descanso, exit 163(S) in San Diego.

Head west and north if it’s a taste of the Old West you’re after.

Stagecoaches stopped clomping along dusty roads at the turn of the century, but you can still raise a glass at two relay stations on the old N. L. Wines Stagecoach Line.

Mattei’s, in Los Olivos, and Cold Spring Tavern, 12 miles northwest of Santa Barbara, are the only two landmarks on the route still operating, said James Norris, a regional historian. “The route from San Luis Obispo through Los Olivos . . . to Santa Barbara started in 1861, so people in the area could get mail,” he said. “Mattei’s and Cold Spring started up about 25 years after the stagecoaches started running.”

The road between the two taverns, California 154, has widened and straightened over the years, but there is one stretch of road that is the same as it was a century ago, according to Norris: “Drive down Stagecoach Road--where it starts behind Cold Spring Tavern--for two to three miles, before you hook up with State Highway 154,” he advised. “Even in your car, you can get a feel for what it might have been like traveling through the wilderness in a stagecoach.”

Mountain lilac and a red berry plant called toyon, should be blooming in January if it’s warm enough, Norris said, and keep your eyes open for deer in the alfalfa field beside the San Lucas Ranch.

Audrey Ovington, owner of the Cold Spring Tavern, said patrons still start dinner the way they did a century ago--with a glass of spring water. Aside from the menu, which features several game dishes, Cold Spring hasn’t changed. Mountain lion skins and antiques line the walls, and bullet holes adorn the ceiling.

“About 30 years ago, the caretaker shot off a gun to see if it was loaded,” said Ovington, whose mother bought the tavern in 1941 for $2,000. “It was. The bullet blasted across the Dutch doors, into the Long Room and shot up the ceiling. The repairman wanted $120 to fix it. I said, ‘Honey, I don’t want a new building, I want the hole fixed.’ He stood firm on the price, so I left it. The termites are the same too except now they’re collecting Social Security.”

Reservations are a must at the Cold Spring Tavern, 5995 Stagecoach Road, Santa Barbara. Lunch is served from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; dinner from 5 to 10 p.m. on weekends. Call (805) 967-0066. On Saturdays, at the pub next door--formerly a spring water bottling plant--you can listen to live music from 3 to 7 p.m., or from 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.

Mattei’s Tavern ceased to be a hotel in the 1960s, but patrons still enjoy drinking in the pub or dining in the restaurant of the 101-year-old white clapboard house, which is warmed by two stone fireplaces.

“Almost every political figure and movie star in the 1920s went to Mattei’s,” Norris said. “There’s a mystique about Mattei’s--and Cold Spring--that still exists. They’re little bits of civilization in the middle of nowhere. Who’d expect to find Kentucky 12 miles away from Santa Barbara?”

Mattei’s Tavern, 158 Railway Ave. (on California 154), Los Olivos, is open Saturdays for lunch and dinner from noon to 10 p.m.

Wind up your journey at the Union Hotel in Los Alamos, a two-story, 16-room structure that has been restored from 12 dismantled barns originally built circa 1880. “People say they expect Miss Kitty from ‘Gunsmoke’ to walk down the stairs,” said Dick Langden, the hotel’s 29th owner, who spent 15 years refurbishing the one-time Wells Fargo stop.

The lobby features a handmade lamp from the movie “Gone With the Wind,” while the saloon boasts 125-year-old bar doors purchased from a bordello in the South and a 150-year-old African mahogany bar. The upstairs parlor, for overnight guests only, features a Brunswick pool table, circa 1880.

Langden is also restoring the gas station next door, built in 1928, and a nearby 19th-Century Victorian house that will become a hotel. “I don’t want people merely to step back into time,” he said. “I want them to sit on it, feel it, breathe it and eat it.”

On Saturday and Sunday nights, Langden dishes out an exceptional family-style dinner, featuring Santa Maria-style barbecued steak, a tri-tip steak blackened on red oak bark. (The technique was copyrighted by the town of Santa Maria in 1978. “The barbecue started when rancheros barbecued under the oaks in the 1880s to thank their neighbors for helping to brand the new calves,” according to the Santa Maria Chamber of Commerce. “There’s no mesquite, no chips. Just red oak and top sirloin seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic.”)

Union Hotel, 362 Bell St., Los Alamos. Call (805) 928-3838. Dinner, priced at $12 per person and served between 5 and 8 p.m, also includes cheese and crackers, soup, salad, corn bread and honey butter, oven-roasted potatoes and apple fritters. Rooms, featuring handmade quilts, antique wallpaper and handcarved four-poster beds, run from $81 to $98 per night.

If you have a few extra hours in the afternoon, take U.S. 101 north to Santa Maria to the old brick Union Sugar Factory, celebrating its 90th birthday. Nestled in the Santa Maria Valley, the factory is one of the oldest operating sugar plants in the nation and the only one that transports sugar beets by rail. The factory has stopped production until April, so you may want to save this part of the trip for the spring, when a pleasing molasses scent permeates the valley and you can tour the plant.

Union Sugar Factory, 2820 W. Betteravia Road, Santa Maria. (805) 925-8633. Take U.S. 101 north to the Betteravia Road exit. Head west for several miles and when you hit a fork in the road, stay right. Call Marilyn Stanley to arrange for a tour.