I wasn’t too sure what to expect when I arrived at the Browns Valley Open Space trailhead in Vacaville, although I did know there’s no actual parking lot and I would need to leave my car alongside the road. That really wasn’t a problem since traffic is fairly minimal. But I’ll admit I felt intimidated when I realized that once […]
Even though this one-hour episode of Road Trip is titled “Cotati,” Huell actually spends his day exploring the wider area of both Cotati and Sebastopol in Sonoma of County. I’ve passed through both places along Highway 101 quite a few times and even enjoyed staying in Sebastopol on a number of occasions. So it’s great to learn more about the […]
It was late September of this year, and I was enjoying a morning hike along the southern edge of the Point Arena Stornetta Public Lands. Although the hour was nearing 11 o’clock, the misty fog still lingered, obscuring my view of the horizon; but just below me the rugged beauty of rocky reefs and ledges pounded by the surf more […]
You might not think that onions and redwood trees have much to do with each other, and ordinarily you would be correct. But in Vacaville, California, a beautiful grove of redwoods exists very much as a result of a lot of onions. As a kid, I never gave much thought to Vacaville except for those occasions in the 1960s and […]
This week I did a couple of hikes at different sites to the north and west of Vacaville, California. One was the Brown’s Valley Open Space; the other was Lagoon Valley Park, just off I-80. Even though I normally prefer to hike in the cooler morning temperatures, I wound up cutting my exploration of the Brown’s Valley site very short […]
The area around Big Break Regional Shoreline, just east of Antioch on the San Joaquin River, looks to have been a very busy place in the past — rusted machine parts and abandoned boats lie scattered about, faint reminders of days gone by. Nowadays, this part of the shore has been dedicated to restoration and preservation of habitat that welcomes […]
I had never heard the story of the Solano Train Ferry until I watched this episode of California’s Gold from 2006. But I’ve traveled several times along the train tracks on the south shore of the Carquinez Strait and passed by the site of Port Costa, and I’ve always wondered about the many wooden pilings left standing in the water […]
For awhile now I have been wondering how the name of this creek should be pronounced and was referring to it as Pyoo-tah Creek. But it finally occurred to me to seek the answer on my own bookshelf, in a book titled “Historic California: Its Colorful Names and How It Got Them,” by Alton Pryor (originally published in 2002). Thus […]