In 1880, author Robert Louis Stevenson spent part of his honeymoon in a cabin of an abandoned silver mine on the site of what is now Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, spanning more than 3,000 undeveloped acres across the upper slopes of Mount St. Helena.

Facilities are few inside the park, although the reward for tackling the five-mile trail, which leads to the summit of the long-dormant volcano is views reaching to San Francisco and – on clear days – as far north as snow-capped Mount Shasta and as far east as the Sierra Nevadas.

Fans of Stevenson’s fiction might recognise the park from landscapes described in The Silverado Squatters – a story based on his stay here – while Mount St. Helena bears striking similarities to Spyglass Hill, the fictional mountain of Stevenson’s Treasure Island.