Posted by Karen on 21-Aug-2010
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Pauline and I headed out towards Calavaras Big Trees State Park today, so that she could experience the other type of huge trees we have out here in California. She enjoyed her visit to the Coastal Redwoods this spring, so now we’re going to see the redwoods’ cousins, the Giant Sequoias. While stopped in Jackson for a break, we decided to make a visit to the Kennedy Gold Mine. There is quite a bit to see, the tour is around 2 hours, or longer if you get the tour guide that likes to talk, like we got. There is a museum and gift shop, movies to be watched, furnace buildings, old equipment, tailing wheels, the head frame and the mine office/house to be seen. After our 3 hour tour, we continued on to Big Trees park and enjoyed a nice stroll through the north grove.
Posted by Karen on 14-Mar-2010
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Lori and I went to Capay Valley to check out the Almond Blossom Festival, but when we got to the first little town and saw the tons of cars and bikes and no place to park, we decided to just skip the festival and go for a cruise around the Capay Valley to see what there was to see. We cruised Highway 16, stopping along the flowing Cache Creek to enjoy the view, and when we reached the end of Highway 16, we took Bear Valley Road. Bear Valley Road is a less traveled graded dirt road that traverses through the hills and offers nice views and occasionally views of cows that are closer than you expect. As we meandered down the back roads, the signs for Lodoga and Stonyford caught our attention, so that’s the way we went. We stopped for a late lunch at the Timberland Bar & Grill in Stonyford, which is a small town of about two blocks at the crossroads. While lunching and chatting with the locals, they recommended that we check out East Park Reservoir before we headed home, so we did, and it’s a pretty and fairly large reservoir. After checking out the reservoir, it was time to find our way back one valley over to the east, back to our own Sacramento Valley and head home.
Posted by Karen on 31-Jan-2010
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Lori and I went to Yosemite Valley to spend the weekend under the Full Wolf Moon, the biggest and brightest full moon of the year. From the Farmers’ Almanac:
Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages. Thus, the name for January’s full Moon. Sometimes it was also referred to as the Old Moon, or the Moon After Yule. Some called it the Full Snow Moon, but most tribes applied that name to the next Moon.
On the way down Friday, we stopped at a vineyard and tried to capture the rows of bare grape vines and the precise line of trees behind it. We also stopped to look at a camping trailer I was interested in, so we didn’t arrive at Yosemite until slightly before sunset. We went up to Tunnel View to watch the sunset, which was fairly ordinary, but then the full moon started rising behind Half Dome and that was very extraordinary. For sleeping, we’d rented one of the Curry Village heated cabins and I must say, the heaters in those cabins are excellent.
Saturday morning, we walked over to the Happy Isles Bridge and photographed the Merced River and then we headed over to Yosemite Falls, Ahwahnee Meadow, Sentinel Bridge and just photographed away. We decided to spend sunset and moonrise on Sentinel Bridge, photographing Half Dome and the Merced River. We met a few other hardy souls out there with their cameras too and we all chatted and laughed away even though it was near freezing out there. We saw a little avalanche fall from Half Dome and I got a few pictures of it, which was kind of exciting. After the sun set, a huge cloud of fog settled over the horizon and even though it was the biggest and fullest moon of the year, we couldn’t see it rising, just the illumination of it behind the fog. Okay, time for pizza and warmth.
Sunday morning, we checked out the visitor center and the Indian Museum and met an old Indian woman weaving baskets in the traditional style. At Valley View, we met a couple of crows that were more than eager to pose for us, so of course we had to oblige them and take their photograph. As we headed for home, we stopped for one last waterfall on Cascade Creek, and then headed home after a really nice weekend.
Posted by Karen on 05-Jan-2010
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We have been socked in by fog for days and days now and everything is just a dreary gray. So, after going to Roseville to look at a trailer, I just kept driving right on out of town, just trying so desperately to get out of the fog for a bit. Finally, just past Auburn at 2,000 feet elevation… I’m out of the fog and free from the bleak gray for a few hours (hurray!). I explored a few side roads off the freeway and then found Yankee Jims Road, which is a nice 13 mile stretch of graded dirt road that takes you to Foresthill and that sounded like a nice way to spend some time out of the fog, so away I went. I only encountered a couple of other trucks, so it was just a nice pretty drive along the canyon and across the old 1930s Colfax-Foresthill suspension bridge. I stopped and enjoyed a waterfall along the way and then returned back to the grayness of the valley.
