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 […]
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is so vast and ever changing that there is no way I could hope to ever see all of its aspects. Every time I go there I’m amazed at how beautiful it is. On this particular day, I traveled along the River Road on my way to Antioch, and after taking a wrong turn I paused […]
Putah Creek is one of those places I’ve been aware of for many years but never got around to exploring until recently; part of the reason is that it runs through Yolo and Solano counties, on the other side of the Sacramento Valley from where I live. On this particular day in early October, I happened upon one of the […]
Just like Huell, when I think of “dunes” I tend to picture piles of bare sand, difficult to walk through and devoid of any sort of plant life. The last thing I expected to see was a thick, green, healthy forest. And although you will see some bare sand dunes in this episode of Golden Coast from 2004, there’s so […]
Greenwood Creek State Beach is another beautiful spot along the Northern California coast that I never knew existed until very recently. I’m sure there’s much more to see than the small portion I was able to take in during our short exploration; the Visitor Center is located in the town of Elk and just across the road from where we […]
I really enjoy sharing the driving duties when the Big Guy and I take a road trip, but unless I pull over and stop every time I see something interesting — not an idea that would go over well with my travel companion — I wind up missing the chance to photograph a lot of cool stuff. Here are a […]