I planned to go on a hike today, but that was mid-day. Feeding sheep is first.
Sunrise viewed from the barn. After chores I drove to the newly opened 1500 acre Patwino Worrtla Kodak Dihii open space park managed by Solano Land Trust, outside Fairfield and only about 25 minutes from home. I had never been to this park but had read about the progress made on opening it for the public.
The park is usually open Friday through Monday, but there was a special New Year’s Day docent-led hike. There is good signage throughout the property so you can always figure out what trail you are on. We started at the Welcome Plaza at the bottom of this map. We saw the east half of the property, making it to the loop at the northeast and then back down the Bay Area Ridge Trail. That was just under six miles total.
This is oak woodland. The blue oaks are deciduous so they are bare now. The recent rains have brought the landscape to life with green grass.
That is Mt. Diablo in the distance. That’s the mountain that features in many of my Across the Road photos because those are taken from the property just across Meridian Road where we live. Wikipedia says, “The Mount Diablo Meridian, established in 1851, is a principal meridian extending north and south from its initial point atop Mount Diablo in California at W 121° 54.845. Established under the U.S. Public Land Survey System, it is used to describe lands in most of northern California and all of Nevada.” DavisWiki says “Meridian Road is a north-south road, roughly located between Dixon and Vacaville. The Meridian refers to its location on the principal meridian for NorCal for the US Public Land Survey. If you were to travel due south from the road, you’d hit the peak of Mt. Diablo, a prominent geological landmark.”
The wind turbines along Hwy. 12 on the way to Rio Vista feature in the view to the southeast.
There are live oaks interspersed with the deciduous blue oaks.
These blue oaks are magnificent with and without leaves.
Another view that includes Mt. Diablo. Hopefully I’ll go hiking there one of these days. I was there in 2020 and this is the blog post (on my website) about that.
I will definitely be back here in the spring for wildflowers.
For the best explanation of the question in the title listen to Life With Fire podcast featuring my son, Matt, who explains Air Attack and discusses the expectations and reality for use of aircraft in wildland firefighting. This is what you will hear. I think it’s a great podcast, even if I am a little biased.
I wrote this blog post when Kirby was here and we visited Matt’s office at the USFS Wildland Fire Training and Conference Center at the old McClellan Air Force Base, now the McClellan Business Park. Matt is hardly ever at his office, at least not during this season. Right now he is near San Bernardino on the Line Fire.
This is from this morning’s (9-15-2024) CBS News online: “Firefighters continued to gain ground in their firefight against the 38,421-acre Line Fire, which was burning in San Bernardino County. The fire, believed to be the result of arson, was 36% contained, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) reported Sunday. .. Over 4000 personnel are assigned to the fire across multiple fire agencies…”
Last month I picked Matt up in Placerville after he returned a rental car he was using on his last fire assignment. We stopped at the Placerville Airport where helicopters had been staged for some of the recent fires in Northern California.
This is the helicopter Matt is usually in. He is in touch with the other aircraft and ground personnel and helps direct the air attack where it is needed.
Another view of Matt’s helicopter with the pilot waiting for action.
This Chinook helicopter is huge. I can’t remember the details now. I think it can carry 2000 gallons of water. (I may have pulled that number out of the air and I can’t ask Matt right now. I just asked Mr. Google and see that Chinooks of various configurations may carry 2500 to 3000 gallons and fill at a rate of 4000 gallons/minute.)
The Chinook fills with a retractable snorkel. There are windows down low in the front to give a better view of the ground.
This is the cargo area.
If the Chinook is called into action this whole crew goes with it. There is a fuel truck, and a maintenance/mechanic truck and trailer. I think Matt said that two mechanics are with the team at all times.
After seeing the helicopters we drove to Matt’s house outside Pollock Pines and shared a firefighter lunch he had brought with him. There are a lot of calories there–needed when on the fire line.
Then we drove up the mountain to take Ralston for a swim.
The destruction of the Caldor Fire in 2021 is obvious.
On lands that are privately owned much of the burned timber was harvested while it could still be used for lumber. Trees have been replanted, but I won’t see the return of this forest in my lifetime.
On Monday we went on a hike with my brother and sister-in-law. I think it was actually a walk because the trail followed the edge of the lake fairly closely. Doesn’t a hike involved dramatic changes in elevation or at least some level of difficulty? Regardless, it was a beautiful day while the annual growth is still green and not all the trees have fully leafed out. (Is that a word?)
We drove to the north end of Lake Berryessa and stopped at the trail head.
My brother has been here several times and expects to find ospreys and eagles. We saw ospreys in the air on the way here and found another not long after starting on the trail.
This is a view of the landscape and the lake. There is an osprey in this photo also, but you have to look hard to see it.
Here is the osprey, right in the middle of that other photo. Notice there are two here. One is below the nest.
Another view across the lake. What a beautiful site for a ranch headquarters.
I have always taken more photos of plants than birds. Plants sit still longer and I can get closer.
Here is a magnificent oak tree.
The oak woodland landscape.
We noticed several trees with holes in the bark. Can you tell what is in the holes?
The holes are filled with acorns.
The acorn woodpecker is responsible for this. Wikipedia has this to say about this behavior: Acorns are stored in small holes drilled especially for this purpose in “granaries” or “storage trees”—usually snags, dead branches, utility poles, or wooden buildings. Storage holes—always in dead tissue such as bark or dead limbs—are used year after year, and granaries can consist of thousands of holes, each of which may be filled by an acorn in the autumn.
This turkey vulture wasn’t about to leave his meal, although three others did fly off as we walked by.
Can you spot the bird here?
This one is a bald eagle.
We walked about as far as La Pointe (on the map at the top) and turned around because we all had visitors coming for dinner. On the way back we saw the same osprey pair.
This is Dan, me, Kathy, and Dave thoroughly enjoying the day.
M birthday was last week and I spent the day with my son exploring some of the El Dorado National Forest.
Matt drove and I wasn’t looking at a map so all I know is that we headed up Ice House Road and went beyond some of the other areas we have hiked in the past. The first stop was to look at the Van Vleck Bunkhouse, built in 1957, and now rented by recreational users from the Forest Service.
I had no idea that the Forest Service was in the vacation rental business. This might be a fun place to stay with a group of people. It sleeps six, has propane for cooking, but no electricity, and has running water during the summer.
This is the meadow south of the bunkhouse with Desolation Wilderness in the background.
Matt didn’t care that there was no water. He tried out the bathtub at the edge of the meadow.
This is more of what was the meadow. Matt said that several years ago they did a prescribed burn here to maintain the meadow, but trees are encroaching again.
After leaving the meadow we drove further and then followed GPS coordinates to find the site of a plane crash in 1941. The info at that link tells of the air force pilot and crew that were flying a B-17, known as the Flying Fortress, from Salt Lake City to Sacramento. Due to weather and mechanical issues it went down on November 2, 1941. The pilot had ordered the passengers to put on parachutes. They all made it out but the pilot did not and two days later the crash site was discovered. We were here exactly 83 years later.
There is a trail of sorts to the site, but you’d still have to know where you’re going to find it.
The wing stretches off to the right. The other wing is at a different location.
This is what the remaining wing looks like.
Matt had the coordinates of other parts including the wing, and we walked farther to find the site, but didn’t see it before we turned back.
As we walked back down the trail I turned and could see the plane from an angle where I hadn’t noticed it before.
There were several downed trees in the area. I was surprised to see so many down with the roots pulled out of the ground. I suppose the severe storms last winter were to blame. The root structure of this one is massive.
Check out the size of this tree.
This was my view.
There were some big mushrooms too. You can’t tell from the photo but that one is bigger than my hand.
We drove back towards Matt’s house, but first turned up the road to Big Hill, the heliport where Matt used to work. This is the view of where we had been earlier with Desolation in the background.
View to the west. I wish I could make an arrow on this photo. I’d point it to the mountain top that is Mt. Diablo, the mountain that I see due south when I walk Across the Road at my house. There is a strip of white above the mountains, below the blue-turning-pink part. Do you see a small dark bump just above that white strip, just to the right of center? That is the tip of Mt. Diablo. I think it’s interesting to see it from a totally different vantage point.
If you read the first post in this series you know that I started Day 1 with our first full day here. There was a travel day before that one, as is Day 6. So this would really be our seventh day away from home…just maintaining some level of accuracy.
We took a group photo before we all left. The California contingent are the four of us on the left. Adrianne, on the right, stayed with us. We first met her in Maryland several years ago and have stayed in touch. She drove here from Ohio. Some of the best time on this trip was spent hanging out together in the living room and at the kitchen table.
Fall color on the way to the airport.
Our travel days were easy and without incident. they were just long.
Somewhere over the mid-west.
The Rockies.
Over Salt Lake, but it’s mostly under the plane.
More of the salt flats. Some of you fly all the time and you are used to seeing this. I don’t see this often and I like getting this perspective
Lake Tahoe and the Sierras. That means we’re almost home.
When we see the fields of the Central Valley it means we are home. Aren’t those beautiful patterns?
Those hills just under the sunset are “my hills”. Our farm is in the valley just east of the lower hills.
How much time and energy do you spend making decision? Sometimes it seems overwhelming and it’s often about something trivial.
I’m helping with a new website. I’m not really helping, but being a guinea pig about how it all works for a non-tech person to enter things and helping to find glitches and things that are confusing. Is that a beta-tester? Or do you have to know more to have that title?
There is a place that asks for a banner across the part that will have Meridian Jacobs info. How to decide what photo? Sheep? Weaving? Yarn? The point of the website is to sell things. How do I choose one? The photo needs to fit the banner space. The software will supposedly take the appropriate size piece out of whatever photo you send, but I thought I should start with something the right size. I started with these below. Some were just experimental to see how they would fit the space.
A sheep photo? This is an older photo but I suppose that doesn’t matter as long as the quality of the photo is good enough.
I wanted to try something with more sheep and a background. This is not a good background.
This photo looks a bit washed out–maybe I can adjust that but at this point I was looking for any photo that fit the sheep into the landscape with a bit of horizon.
What about yarn or weaving? I’d sure like to sell blankets. Version 1.
Version 2.
Version 3.
I have a series of these photos that I have always liked.
I have used this photo (full size) a lot because it shows the difference between black and white sheep and lilac sheep. Townes, the lilac on the right, got the tips of the top horns caught in a fence two days ago and I found him dead.
Back to landscape photos. Here is one with a horizon and a lot of sheep and lush grass. The sheep are pregnant and recently shorn.
I walked across the road this morning and had just changed the fences so the sheep have this field near the road. That’s the view I was after. It is a narrow band but it shows sheep and the horizon. I like that this one shows our position in the Sacramento Valley. That notch you see in the hills is where the road goes to Lake Berryessa. Its a landmark for me.
This is a little different cropping of this morning’s photo.
A closer up view makes the sheep and the barn more prominent and removes the white fence on the right but cuts off the trees and my notch on the hills.
Back to yarn. This is what I did the last few days. Indigo on the left and Cosmos and Dahlia on the right.
But maybe I need black and white.
No decision made yet. Any suggestions are welcome…
I don’t like that my blog posts are all out of order now, but that’s my life…out of order. Before the fair (the last three blog posts) I took Kirby to the Marine Mammal Center on the Marin Headlands.
I had signed up for a tour at 11:00. We got there early enough to spend about an hour at Rodeo Beach before the tour. Notice all the surfers spending their Sunday morning in the water.
I have been to the Marine Mammal Center only once before. I found my blog post from 2011 when a few Farm Club members visited.
This same sea lion is in that first blog post. This time I learned that sea lions have longer flippers than seals and that is how they are more mobile on land.
The elephant seal was also there earlier.
On this visit I had signed up for a tour. It was well worth the modest amount that cost. We had a good tour guide who has been volunteering at the center for years. She described how the Center began–three friends wanted to help the mammals they found (sea lions?) and started the effort in 1975 with bathtubs enclosed by a fence.The Center is entirely privately funded and has rescued over 24,000 marine mammals. The Center’s goal is not to keep animals but to rescue and release them back to the wild.
We had a look behind the scenes at the enclosures where animals are monitored and rehabilitated. The people in the pen are using a PVC and net contraption to move a sea lion out of the water.
They are moving the sea lion to a scale at the end of the pens and using a SealBarrow for transport.
Kirby wrote her name on a sea otter cut out and put it up on this wall.
After our tour we sought out a whale skeleton I’d read about. A blue whale washed up on Ocean Beach in 1988. It was buried and after five years arranged in this outline of a whale. This has not been maintained and there is no sign although I saw one at this link for the Park Service. The part at the front that looks like wood is baleen–the filter-feeding system of this whale.
On the way back I took the one way loop road that provides views of San Francisco and the Golden Gate when its not foggy. The dirt road in this photo was below the paved road and was closed to traffic. If we’d had more time and energy we could have walked a couple of miles to Kirby Cove at the water’s edge. I told Kirby that she’d have to plan for that on another visit.
It was just a few days before that we had been to Fort Point which you can barely see at the south end of the bridge.
We were able to park on the edge of the road to walk out the path to the overlook. It was extremely windy and cold. On the path I was surprised to see two vendors selling some kind of hot sandwich or wrap. We passed them, to Kirby’s annoyance.
From a Google Search: “Fort Baker, the final “Post-to-Park” conversion in the Golden Gate National Parks, is a 335 acre former 1905 US Army post located immediately north of the Golden Gate Bridge. There are more than 30 historic army buildings, many clustered around a main parade ground.” I was surprised that there were so many buildings and remnants of buildings throughout this area and they are left wide open. There is a lot to explore in the Marin Headlands and I hope that Dan and I will make it back for more exploration.
A final view of the bridge. This is as clear as it got while we were there.
Back home. Kirby is always followed by Jade and Hazel and a couple of others.
We decided to take Kirby to the beach and check out some of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. There is so much to see and it is so close to home, but I have never taken time to explore it.
We had some good advice from a friend who works in San Francisco and started at Ocean Beach.
After the 105+ days we’ve had at home, the overcast windy beach was a welcome change.
We chose the beach at Fort Funston for our second stopping point. Dan and Kirby are sitting on an old gun mount.
I was surprised at the old military structures that have fallen from eroded cliffs and are left in place. Usually I expect to see signs–either informational and educational signs (because this is part of the National Recreation Area) or warnings. But there is none of that–just remnants of what used to be there.
The hike up from the beach.
After a couple of hours at the beaches we drove to a parking lot between the Golden Gate entrance and Fort Point. We followed the trail that took us down to the Bay and to Fort Point.
The Fort itself is just under the bridge, but of course there was no bridge there when it was built in the 1850s.
That’s a huge cargo ship sailing to the Pacific.
I am fascinated by the history here and amazed that I’ve lived most of my life nearby (and was born in SF) and knew nothing about any of this.
According to the info on the NPS site a special arch was designed so that the bridge could be built without destroying Fort Point.
We climbed the spiral staircase to access the second and third floors.
Some of the rooms are open with historical displays.
The spiral staircase goes all the way to the top of the fort. It interesting to be right under the Golden Gate Bridge. It was also extremely windy and cold. (I thought about how we looked as grandparents supervising a child wearing shorts and flipflops.)
There was originally a lighthouse in use, but after the bridge was built it was no longer necessary.
View of the bridge on the way home. This was the first time since we’d been in San Francisco that the towers weren’t shrouded in fog.
Three of us traveled together to Black Sheep Gathering in Albany, Oregon. My friend, Vicki, used her truck to pull my trailer with my 10 sheep. She brought fleeces to show and sell. Another friend, Doris rode with us. We left about 7 a.m. on Thursday.
I don’t remember the last time that I saw Shasta Lake full.
Glimpse of Mt. Shasta.
Another view of Mt. Shasta.
Two of the sheep I brought were already sold so we did a parking lot transfer of those and then settled the rest of the sheep in the barn by late in the day.
Vicki slept in her camper, but Doris and I set up tents for the weekend. This became a gathering spot for some of our California and Oregon friends.
I took photos of a few of the less common breeds. These are Horned Dorset, a sheep with spots that can make them look like Jacob sheep to people who don’t see the more subtle differences. The horns have a quite different look than my sheep with two horns.
I started writing this blog in 2008, but when I started my SquareSpace website (www.meridianjacobs.com) in 2019 I switched to writing my blog there. It bothers me that if (when) I stop using the website for business someday and, therefore stop paying for it, I’ll lose all my blog posts. My blog is like my scrapbook and I like to look back at things every so often. Besides, I liked the way that I could find previous posts when I wanted to here. It’s never worked as well on the other site. I hope I can set this up the way I remember from the old days. Hmmm. 2019 was the “old days”, the “before” days. Before the major injury I had and before the pandemic. Things seem different now. Rusty’s blog is still here too although he didn’t write anything after mid- 2019.
Another thought is that the website blog should be business and this one is more the rest of life. However, in my life business and everything else are completely intertwined. Is it realistic to think I can keep up with two blogs? That’s doubtful. So this is a trial to see if I like this and how best to do it.
About two weeks ago we drove to Ukiah to deliver wool to the mill. Knowing this was the best time for wildflowers we planned to find a place to hike on the way back.
Here we are overlapping business and pleasure already. The trip was to deliver wool and I decided to bring my Ashford e-spinner to make use of time while on the road. It works great this way, although it would have been handy to have it on a box instead of the floor.
We stopped at a place where Dan remembered seeing a trailhead. Don’t confuse this Lynch Canyon with the one in Solano County. We were in Colusa County. There is nothing here except a place to park and this map, which has seen better days.
The trail is a dirt road and you can see that its going to be very hot once summer is here.
The first part of the hike is across the side of the hills where it looks as though maybe rock had been removed when making the highway. It looks as though the terrain was disturbed years ago. Along side the dirt road we were walking on were these boulders of serpentine.
I am fascinated by this rock and by the photo. Doesn’t it look as though that brown part in the center is something dropping in front of the boulder? Or is that just me seeing it that way? That is part of the rock.
I am disappointed that I don’t know all the plant ID the way I think I used to. However I don’t remember ever seeing this grass. It is quite different than the usual species we see.
I can identify an oak tree, however, even if I’m never sure of which oak it is.
About a mile or so away from the main road we found this building. There are old tables and chairs and evidence of electric lights. There is also a menu on the wall for “Roadkill Cafe” and it includes things like Chunk of Skunk and Awesome Possum. This is obviously a more modern addition and you can find downloads of various versions on-line. I looked because I was trying to find out some history of this building. The best I could find is the description of a hunters’ cabin at this location. It would have taken quite a bit of effort to get this building here and also power it (a generator for lights?). Or maybe it was brought here without the plan of ever having power to it again. So it remains a mystery to me.
I was intrigued by these flowers, thinking that I recognized them and that they don’t get any more showy than this. Later I found one that had finished it’s blooming but I don’t have a photo. When it pops open it looks like a white papery dandelion. I have photos of that in one of the next blog posts I’ll write here from when I went to Jepson Prairie. It is called Blow Wives.
After a stream crossing past the cabin we found several trails going in different directions. We chose this one.
This flower is Ithuriel’s Spear, a native perennial.
In quantity, they were quite showy.
We didn’t reach the end of the trail. We kept going a little farther to see over the ridge, but there was never a ridge top to look over, just more hills and trees. Without a map we decided that we’d probably gone far enough.
As we turned around and came back down the trail we did have a great view of where we’d been. You can see the dirt road through the grassy area at the base of the ridge on the left.
Buttercups I think.
A view of the Road Kill Cafe from the other direction.
Just beyond that point it looks as though the creek used to be dammed. This is quite a sizeable dam. It’s obviously not being used now but it makes me wonder again about the history here.
View from the car on the way home.
So I hope that I can format this blog the way I remember it from before. Then I’ll have to decide where I want to live…at Squarespace or here at WordPress… or both?
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