Our cold gray January weather isn’t exactly motivating me to get outdoors and start moving; I’m already longing for warmer weather. But for some reason this morning I started thinking back to early last May and the week we spent in Napa County, west of Lake Berryessa. We were almost exactly equidistant from Clear Lake and Berryessa. I found the […]
I really have mixed feelings about hiking from the Sterling Pointe trailhead at Folsom Lake. On the plus side, parking is free and the lot is usually nearly empty whenever I go. It’s also a fairly easy hike downhill to the lakeshore with great scenic views and even a bench or two along the way. Once at the bottom, you […]
It’s been a long time since I last hiked at Folsom Lake. Today I was curious about the water levels, and encouraged by the cooler weather, I drove out to Sterling Point on the North Fork. I pretty much had the whole place to myself. Halfway through my walk, I sat down on a rock overlooking the water and just […]
It was early May, with cool temperatures and the skies threatening rain. At the end of a 2-hour drive from home, we did some exploring along the west shore of Lake Berryessa and found only a handful of other people — and no one at all in this quiet spot. The wildflowers were abundant, and the day seemed just about […]
I’ve learned (unfortunately, the hard way) that however weary I might feel after a long day of driving on the highway, it’s usually a good idea to find a place to have a walk around outside. No matter how much I would prefer to throw myself onto the bed and not move until morning, things go much better if I […]
On my way home from Clear Lake in March of this year I paused alongside Highway 128 to shoot a few photos of the lower part of Putah Creek, where it exits Lake Berryessa (I published more images of Putah Creek in April, seen here). The landscape on both banks was lush and green, making it a tempting spot to […]
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, […]
One recent experience I won’t forget for awhile happened on the first leg of our return trip to Northern California from the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas. It was the end of July, and Texas, much like California, had been in a drought for some time. The weather during our stay was relentlessly hot and fairly muggy. So when we […]
