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 […]
Near Anchor Bay, Mendocino County, November 2021.
Back in early May of this year, I shared some slide images from 1985 featuring the area around Jackson, California — specifically Daffodil Hill and Indian Grinding Rock State Historic Park (Chaw’se). This week I’ve got a handful of previously overlooked slides from that same Gold Country trip. I can’t tell you exactly when they were shot, but the processing date […]
There are a number of hiking and mountain biking trails in the area of Lagoon Valley Lake and the Peña Adobe. In my search to find a path toward Jack Hume Grove, I stumbled upon the Malaka Trail. It took me across a creek and up the side of a steep, oak-studded hill that sits right next to Interstate 80. […]
Sadly, I didn’t get to see any of the rocks that gave this beach its name; and in fact we didn’t even really know where we were during our visit. Our intended destination was actually a spot named Schooner Gulch — but we took the wrong trail and wound up on the next beach to the north. A huge pile […]
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 […]
If you’re like me, it’s very likely you will never have the chance to climb to the top of Yosemite’s majestic Half Dome peak — but don’t worry, because Huell has already done it for us! This hour-long episode of California’s Gold has plenty of breath-taking scenery and moments to make us just a little bit envious, too. The hike […]
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 […]