May 24, 2016

This week, the theme of Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge is Looking Down on Things:

This week all you have to do it look down.  You can be looking down from anything from a cliff to a high rise building or even a plane.  Have fun with this challenge.

You can find quite a few ponds, in a wide variety of sizes, on Mississippi Bar near the American River Parkway. Most of these ponds are man-made — a result of the efforts to mitigate the environmental damage done over the years by gold dredging operations and gravel processing. Although many of the ponds connect, directly or otherwise, to Lake Natoma, some are self contained and rely on rainfall to fill up every winter.

August 18, 2016

October 18, 2016

For the past five years, the drought has left these ponds high and dry. But the 2016-2017 season has without a doubt seen higher than average rainfall totals; and the results are clear to see.

December 14, 2016

Whenever I’m hiking in the area, I’ve made it a habit to pause at the same vantage point and look down to check the water level in this particular pond on Mississippi Bar.

February 18, 2017