Muir Woods National Monument is such an amazing and beautiful place, it’s simply impossible to take it all in during a single visit. I finally had a chance to go there on a day trip last September; but despite shooting lots of photos, it still feels like a dream to me now! I’m not sure when I’ll make it back, […]
It’s actually been a couple of months since I checked out the completed renovations at the beach/picnic area of Negro Bar State Park — but ever since I shot these images I’ve been meaning to go back through my archives and find some of my earlier photos of the area as it’s looked at various times over the past seven […]
Although the two sites have very little in common, I found that the erosion along portions of the Mendocino Headlands reminded me a lot of certain spots along the shoreline at Folsom Lake’s Rattlesnake Bar, seen in the two photos below, shot in December 2020.
I think I saw more ravens than gulls during our visit to Mendocino Headlands State Park earlier this month. While hiking around, I pulled a muscle in my lower back, so I left the Big Guy to wander while I limped back to the car. I was perched sideways in the driver’s seat, feeling more than a little sorry for […]
When you get just a little bit lost looking for the bus stop — but the gorgeous flowers make it all worth the extra mileage.
Last Wednesday I featured an exciting episode of California’s Gold in which Huell climbed to the top of Half Dome; and this week he’s also in Yosemite. This time he spends some time at a much lower elevation, learning about the original inhabitants of the Yosemite Valley and exploring some of the structures similar to those I’ve seen at Indian […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]