CONDOR RETREAT: The Sespe Condor Sanctuary is...

CONDOR RETREAT: The Sespe Condor Sanctuary is no place for condors, the folks trying to save the endangered birds have decided. After two of the rare birds died after hitting power lines near Fillmore recently, the California Condor Recovery Program will try to lure the five birds still in the wild to more remote areas farther north (B1). If that fails, they’ll capture the birds and release them in the San Rafael Wilderness in Santa Barbara County. . . . What will they find there? “A beautiful open grass area with major rock outcroppings,” said Bob Stone, the sanctuary’s wilderness manager. Best of all, “There’s no power lines up there,” Stone said.

BLAME THAT TUNE: People who have never visited Ventura County should be forgiven if they think that it’s a place where “the days are longer, the nights are stronger than moonshine.” After all, that cryptic description hit the airwaves at least a million times during the 1970s when the rock group America crooned about “Ventura Highway.” Tonight, the band that put us on the musical map sings at the Ventura Concert Theatre. . . . That’s assuming that they make it past those “alligator lizards in the air . . . in the air.”

ROOM AT THE INN: As interstates replaced two-lane highways, business dried up at many of Ventura County’s roadside motels. But many remain architectural treasures, and some have found a new niche (Ventura County Life, J8). . . . Murl Wolstenholm has seen just about everything in his 40 years at the Circle W in Ventura: “We get all kinds, salesmen, tourists, quickies, you name it.”

COARSE PRO: There’s a rogue in the ranks at Baltusrol Golf Club, site of this weekend’s U. S. Open. He’s Mark Singer, a self-professed golf bum who shaves when he feels like it and had to buy something to wear for one of the sport’s premier events (C10). . . . Singer has come a long way from Simi Valley High and Ventura College, where he was a standout in the mid-1980s.