I’ve seen plenty of American Coots in a number of watery locations, but Clear Lake is the only place I can seem to get anywhere near them. There always seems to be something comical to me about these small birds; maybe it’s just that I’ve come to associate them with the expression “a funny old coot” — what my Merriam-Webster […]
The weather at Clear Lake has been interesting this week — not the total washout that we feared, although Tuesday was mostly rainy. The worst of the storm seems to have passed, but with a few threatening clouds lingering we’ll have to wait and see what the next couple of days brings. In the meantime, the views here in Nice, […]
I have frequently admired the blue-green iridescence of the male Mallards’ heads, so it was a nice surprise yesterday to get a glimpse of royal purple on these relatively drab females. I was sitting in my car in Lucerne, on the shore of Clear Lake, when a small group of Mallards settled down very nearby. I think we were all […]
As I wandered through the village of Mendocino earlier this month I found quite a few sculptures on the grounds outside the Mendocino Art Center, but others can be found randomly around town. One of the most prominent is the former Masonic Temple, built between 1866 and 1872. Its builder, Erik Albertson, topped it off with a sculpture that is […]
During our recent stay in Mendocino, I actually walked into town twice from our rental house on the east side of Highway 1. Of course there’s loads of amazing ocean views to take in along the Mendocino Headlands; but if you stroll along any of the village streets you’ll soon find all sorts of quirky touches and beautiful historic structures. […]
On a bright Mendocino afternoon in between rainstorms we set out to explore another potential fishing spot, this one along Hwy 1 north of Jughandle (near Fort Bragg). The sun was shining and the sky was bright blue — but it was so windy and cold we could barely walk along the cliff top. According to my hiking guide book […]
I’m not sure if there’s a name for this phenomenon, but maybe you’ve noticed that whenever you’re driving carefully along a winding, narrow, possibly dirt road full of potholes searching for a specific location in the middle of nowhere, three miles can feel more like 50 miles. Just a few miles up Little Lake Road in Mendocino, not far from […]
As we prepared to head home from the coast last Saturday, it was already raining intermittently, with a brief hailstorm earlier in the morning just to keep things interesting. The very real possibility of running into snow in the mountains between Fort Bragg and Willitts was definitely on our minds; we had no chains, and I was glad it was […]
Just a few of the photos from my wanderings around Mendocino village last week. Zooming in closely on my computer, I realized the man in the photo above was carrying an American flag. Now I kind of wish I’d stayed to see what he was doing. I wasn’t aware of the significance of the two signs shown below until I […]