Delta day trip
Some sights from my trip to the Delta with the Big Guy in the last week of June 2025.
The scenic route
Last month as I was heading home from Clear Lake, I decided to explore a completely different route. This took me to Middletown, in the southern end of Lake County, via highway 29, and then southeast through Napa County, along the back side of Lake Berryessa. These were small two-lane roads, completely new to me, and I stopped several times […]
Monticello Dam
I’ve driven past Berryessa’s Monticello Dam quite a few times on the way to other destinations and often wished I could take the time to stop. Finally, driving home from Clear Lake and on my own, I pulled over and took a look around. It was a beautiful but breezy Friday afternoon. While I still intend to go back some […]
Memory Monday: Hicks Album, Week 11
About a month ago I shared the first bunch of images from the Hicks album (Week 6) featuring wildflowers shot in late April of 2010; I don’t know the precise location, but Solano County is a pretty good guess, given the landscape and the fact that Mount Diablo is visible in several shots. In that previous post, I mentioned that […]
Memory Monday: Hicks Album, Week 6
This week’s photos may not zoom in on the beautiful spring wildflowers as much as I might like, but they were good enough to start me really wishing I knew where they were taken — I’d love to go there myself and seek out the purple and white Spotted downingia. I was also dearly hoping the location hasn’t changed in […]
In memory
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 […]
Over the hill
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. […]
Peña Adobe
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 […]
A walk in the garden
I didn’t spend too much time in the small garden abutting the redwoods of the Jack Hume Grove in Vacaville. The flowers were few, and the sun was very bright when I arrived, not long after 12 noon. But a few colorful autumn blooms did catch my eye as well as the attention of some insects. Sadly, although there were […]