A few days ago I was watching television and happened to see a familiar episode of California’s Gold — one that I featured here on my blog last May about the historic bells of the El Camino Real. You may recall that the last 30 minutes of that one-hour episode included a visit to the foundry where new bells were […]
One thing I love about the Northern California coast in the fall and winter is the changeable weather. In a single day, you might get rain, then sunshine, then fog. On this day in the middle of November we arrived on a warm, bright afternoon at the north entrance to the Stornetta Public Lands, along Lighthouse Road. In less than […]
I found quite a lot of the colorful Amanita muscaria or Fly Agaric mushrooms while hiking along the coast near Point Arena. I’m not sure why, but I just couldn’t seem to resist photographing them in this scenic setting.
Although the two sites have very little in common, I found that the erosion along portions of the Mendocino Headlands reminded me a lot of certain spots along the shoreline at Folsom Lake’s Rattlesnake Bar, seen in the two photos below, shot in December 2020.
When you get just a little bit lost looking for the bus stop — but the gorgeous flowers make it all worth the extra mileage.
Later this week we’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving in the US. While I have plenty to be thankful for personally, I also can’t help thinking about what this holiday must feel like from an indigenous perspective. Like most places in the world, California’s history contains both great feats of bravery and terrible acts of destruction and cruelty. Indigenous people and pioneers […]
The Peña Adobe in Vacaville is another one of those sites I’ve passed by on hundreds of occasions, wishing to stop but never finding the time to do so. Well, I finally got there! This historic adobe, built in 1842 by one of the first European families to live in the area, sits right beside Interstate 80 and yet exists […]
One of our first stops whenever we head over to the Northern California coast is Doran Regional Park. The Big Guy has been using this small corner of Bodega Bay to retrieve ghost shrimp (used as bait) for something like 30 years now. Even if we somehow forget to check the tide tables or even the local weather, stopping to […]