SUMMERTIME : COVER STORY : The Right Places : From coffee shops to canine clubs, here’s where the San Fernando Valley’s famed faces hang out to feed the trout and spend the summer.

OK, so some Valley notables we talked to were a little stumped when we asked them to name their favorite places in the San Fernando Valley to hang out or to take out-of-town visitors in the summer.

True, we got answers like “Price Club” and “collapsed apartment buildings.” But there also were plenty of enthusiastic describers of some little-known enclaves, where they can escape from the traffic, smog, stickiness and hubbub of summer without going very far from home.

If you go to the coffee shop at Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City for breakfast on a Saturday or Sunday, you might get a coffee warm-up from Emmy-nominated actress Marion Ross (late of “Brooklyn Bridge”), who lives in Woodland Hills.

No, she isn’t a waitress--her critically acclaimed CBS show having been canceled (critically acclaimed and canceled do so often go hand in hand). She’s in an upcoming Danielle Steele NBC miniseries, “A Perfect Stranger,” and plays comedian Louie Anderson’s mom in the pilot for a sitcom. It’s just that the hotel coffee shop is her favorite weekend hangout.

“I bring my 3 1/2-year-old granddaughter. There are a lot of old actors around there, and they have breakfast and tell jokes,” she said. “The waitresses practically order for you. They bring you what they think you should have. Everybody talks to everybody. Sometimes I’ll get up and get the coffeepot and maybe serve a few people. Every time I go there, I think, gosh, this place goes on and on. No matter how sophisticated the Valley is getting, the Sportsmen’s Lodge stays very homey. I took my children there for the trout, now I’m taking my granddaughter.”

The trout? “We take some bread, and we go and feed all the trout. There’s a big trout pond and swans there.”

Actress Isabella Hofmann (of NBC’s “Dear John”), who lives in Sherman Oaks, was loath to mention her favorite breakfast spot.

“Usually, when people come to visit me, they tend to want to go to the ocean or the mountains, and we’ll make a day trip out of it, which means we have to nourish ourselves before we leave,” she said.

“It’s called Nat’s Early Bite (at Hazeltine Avenue and Burbank Boulevard), and it has the best breakfast in town, as far as I’m concerned. It looks like a dive-y coffee shop, but I had a hankering for a coffee shop sort of atmosphere, so I went in one day about five years ago and never left.” She did leave long enough to have a role in the current Danny DeVito picture, “Renaissance Man.”

“The Rock Store,” North Hollywood resident Rick Overton answered without hesitation.

The what?

“The Rock Store. It’s up on Mulholland. I don’t know the exact number, I just know how to get there. It’s a legendary motorcycle hangout on Sundays. It’s this place built up on a hill made out of piled-up rocks. There’s an old gas pump out front that doesn’t work anymore, one of those classic Route 66-style tin pumps with the skinny hose that just sort of flops around in the wind, and a little greasy-spoon restaurant, you know, all part of the legend and lore, and The Rock Store, where you can grab a beer or a pair of sunglasses or a soda or whatever, and it just loads up with bikes until you can’t even move on Sunday.”

Overton, who recently appeared in “Mrs. Doubtfire” and was about to go on the road with his stand-up act, has four bikes himself. “Anytime a friend comes in and they’re on a bike, I go, well, you gotta catch a little piece of history. . . . Steve McQueen used to hang out there.”

Not surprisingly, a lot of people seem to find summer easier to bear in the mountains that surround the Valley. (Like we expected them to be hanging out at transmission shops on Victory Boulevard?)

Actor Zack Norman (of the current film “Babyfever” and Showtime’s “Lush Life”) hikes the mountaintop trail where Mulholland becomes a dirt road, near Encino Hills Drive.

“I drive over there from my house in Sherman Oaks and begin walking,” said the Boston native. “I walk seven miles, 3 1/2 miles each way. The views are absolutely magnificent. In five minutes from my house, I am in the middle of a place that is absolutely quiet and pristine on one side, and cosmopolitan but magnificently beautiful from my vantage point on the other.”

Actress-comedian Caryl Kristensen (one of “The Mommies” on NBC) and her 10-year-old son found “a little piece of heaven in L.A.,” she said, also in the Santa Monica Mountains--Solstice Canyon, near Pepperdine University.

“It’s really cool. Back in there, it’s just gorgeous. A naturalist will lead you through the park and show you, like, all the things about the park, and it was wonderful,” she said. “It’s great for a city kid to go up there and spend the day.”

“We just shoot right up to the grounds of Mt. Wilson observatory, because it’s so close, and it’s pretty dramatic,” said novelist David Noonan (“Memoirs of a Caddy”), who lives in Toluca Lake.

“It’s up above everything, but it’s literally a half an hour from where we are. I mean it’s one of those places where you’re instantly transported out of Los Angeles and into the mountains, because it’s real winding, winding, a real mountain situation.”

Actress Gail Harris, who lives in Sun Valley and was once named “best Valley girl with a British accent” by drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs, likes to go to the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank. “I go there for the horse shows, mainly, because I ride myself,” said Harris, who rides hunter-jumpers. “But there’s a lot of things for other people to do who aren’t particularly into horses, like the shops and the restaurant. There’s rental horses. And you can take the kids. Other movie stars go there--Loretta Swit and William Shatner. Horse people are just a nice class of people.”

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Harris runs a small publishing business with her husband when not acting. Right now she’s starring in the Jim Wynorski-directed pictures “Hard to Die” and “Sorority House Massacre II.”

“Should I let them know about our secret favorite place?” Bruce Belland called to his wife.

“Everyone just falls in love with it--Hidden Valley.”

Belland, a TV writer and producer best-known as the lead singer for The Four Preps, was referring to that area south of Westlake whose name is often confused with the gated community Hidden Hills.

“You enter this little valley with the most immaculately manicured white fences,” he said. “We were out last weekend, and the spring colts are out, and there are sheep, and there’s this one ranch with the biggest brown bulls and rolling green pastureland. At the end of the valley, there’s a little turn-off road, and there’s a white adobe windmill with a red tile roof set among these pastoral oak trees, and you sit under one of those and take out a picnic lunch and watch the thoroughbreds run around. Everyone is just amazed by the fact that it’s about 20 minutes from where I live in Encino, and it’s out of this world.”

To enjoy a scenic drive to Hidden Valley, take Westlake Boulevard, or California 23, south. Go through Westlake, turn right on Potrero Road, across the county line, then left on Lake Sherwood Drive. Drive around Lake Sherwood to meet up with Potrero again. Go left, taking the road across the valley, about 3 1/2 miles, to Hidden Valley Road, then turn left. The road ends about a mile down. Park along the road, making sure you don’t trespass.

Writer Cynthia Heimel, whose latest book of essays is “Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I’m Kissing You Good-Bye!” suggested (besides Price Club) going to Laurel Canyon Park, where owners can legally let their canines run off-leash after 3 p.m., creating a sort of furred chaos for every breed of dog. Or, as Heimel said, “A friend of mine said it was like going to the Star Wars bar.”

Matt Creeks, who plays Fred Flintstone in “The Flintstones Show” attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood this summer, likes to patronize the patio dining of Los Toros Mexican restaurant in Chatsworth. “They’ve got the best bean dip in the world.”

Screenwriter June Roberts (“Mermaids”) may have summed up summer in the Valley best when she said, “I never leave the house.”

Favorite Hangouts

* Sportsmen’s Lodge Hotel coffee shop, 12825 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, (818) 769-4700

* Nat’s Early Bite, 14115 Burbank Blvd., Van Nuys, (818) 781-3040.

* Rock Store, 30354 Mulholland Highway, Cornell, (818) 889-1311.

* Mountaintop trail where Mulholland becomes a dirt road, at Encino Hills Drive.

* Mount Wilson, Mount Wilson Road, above Pasadena.

* Solstice Canyon, Solstice Canyon Road, Malibu.

* Los Angeles Equestrian Center, 480 Riverside Drive, Burbank. (818) 840-9063.

* Hidden Valley, Lake Sherwood Drive, Lake Sherwood.

* Laurel Canyon Park, Mulholland Drive, just west of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, Hollywood Hills.

* Los Toros Mexican restaurant, 21743 Devonshire St., Chatsworth, (818) 882-3080.