Leon Turnbull Photography

We were totally busy all the long Memorial Day weekend working around the house. My wife was working inside, cleaning the house from top to bottom, and I was working outside in the yard: mowing, landscaping, trimming trees (we have quite a lot of trees in our yard). Whew! That is tough work. We had to do all this work this weekend because my parents are coming to visit next week, plus it was all very much needed work, and I am quite pleased with all we got done. But my poor kids were a bit neglected on the weekend, so much so that on Monday Jadon had had enough. He complained of being sick, but he was really just needing attention, so after I finally finished my yard work by about noon on Monday, I took the kids out to ride their bikes. Jadon is just learning to ride without training wheels, and he finally “got it” on Monday.

Afterwards, I really really wanted to get out and do some waterfallin’. With my parents here the next two weekends, I am not going to be able to get out of the house at all, so this was my one and only chance. I begged my wife to let me go, and she obliged. I decided to go up I-80 to the Truckee area. It was a bit late, and I didn’t have as much time as I wanted, but I stopped at Webber Falls first (will post that one later). Then, on the way home I stopped off at Cisco Grove in search of a “new” waterfall on Rattlesnake Creek. My friend Rob told me about this one that he “found” last year, so it was high on my list to visit this spring. Rob is a funny guy. He loves donuts, in fact he is kinda obsessed about them the way I am obsessed about waterfalls. So anyway, he decided to name this waterfall “Donut Falls”. Technically, it does not have an official name, and since he made the find …. well, it really is Rattlesnake Creek Falls since that is the creek it is on. But we’ll oblige Rob for a little while I guess. It’ll make him happy.

The waterfall is a spectacularly nice 24 ft. high beauty. It is surprising that no one knew of this one before, and that I had not heard of it myself. It is viewable from the road up to Fordyce Lake, but there is an easy path that leads down to the base of the falls. The only real problem with this falls is that I think it might be on private property. There is no sign at the path, and it is obvious that many people have gone down there, but I did notice signs all along the road and creek, so I have a bad feeling it may be private, and that would be a big bummer.

I was working in the yard all Memorial Day weekend. I did manage to get out on Monday evening to do some shooting. More on that later.

Here is one more from my recent outing at Bassi Falls with my son Jadon, and friend Rob.

I had taken off my boots and walked up to this little area in my bare feet. Jadon was sitting on a log watching me, trying to get his feet warm after I had dragged him across a deep section of the stream. Rob was who knows where. To get here, I had to walk through the water. It was ice cold! My feet were turning to icicles after only a few seconds in the water. I had to get out of it to make a photograph, so I climbed up on a rock. That helped a bit. Then it started to rain. Phew. It was a glorious day at Bassi Falls.

I found this cormorant fishing at the docks at the Inn at the Tides restaurant in Bodega Bay. I watched him for quite some time and got some great close-ups. It was quite cool.

Shaking off the water:

Diving for fish:

Ocean, sunset, waterfall. What more could you possibly want?

Our day on Saturday at the coast was relaxing and pretty much perfect. We slept in, not getting up for any sunrise shooting. We had breakfast and went to the beach, where we saw quite a few birds, including pelicans and egrets. After that, we explored the shops in Bodega Bay, had lunch, then went up to Salt Point State Park for the afternoon.

I’ve never been there before, but it has been on my list for quite some time to go there. It is a long, slow drive up from Bodega Bay, even though it is only 30 miles. That highway is as windy as it gets. When we finally arrived, we did a lot of exploring all afternoon. We walked along pretty flowers, and along the ocean. We saw plenty of wildlife. We even saw waterfalls.

There are two waterfalls that drop into the ocean at Salt Point State Park. Both are small, but the nicest one by far is at Phillips Gulch. This waterfall is only 15 ft. high, but when we got here in the afternoon, I knew right away that I wanted to come back to shoot it at sunset.

We went down to Stump Beach where we had our dinner, and saw a sick or injured seal come up on the beach. Poor little guy. We also saw quite a few birds here, including a couple osprey. After dinner, we returned to Phillips Gulch.

It wasn’t nearly as cold as the previous evening, in fact, it was quite warm, more like what I was expecting this weekend. But the warm weather makes for lousy sunsets. No clouds on the horizon, and again the sunset fizzled. But the evening light on the falls more than made up for the lack of color in the sky. It was a perfect place to enjoy the sunset, and we had the place all to ourselves. This location is a bit off the beaten path, and not very many people know about it. But if I’m ever back to Salt Point State Park, this will be my destination again for sunset (especially, if there are clouds). It would be even nicer in the winter when the waterfall is flowing a bit better too.

Bodega Bay is an interesting place. Everyone seems to know each other, and everyone seems to smoke, drink, and/or do drugs. I guess if you live in such a small place, there’s not much else to do except those three things.

We saw plenty of wildlife when we were there, much more than I usually see when I am at the coast. We saw seals, sea lions, deer, and even a whale. We also saw plenty of birds including pelicans, egrets, herons, osprey, cormorants, you name it we saw it. The birds did not seem to display any sort of killer aggressiveness towards human-kind. When you are in Bodega Bay, you have to say that. This is where they filmed “The Birds”, after all. The did display aggresiveness towards each other and towards the sea lions, but that is something else.

One very cool location is at the Inn at the Tides restaurant. The sea lions hang out right there at the docks, waiting for handouts from the fishermen. I was able to get some great close-ups of them (while my wife was spending lots of money in the gift shop), and also of other birds there.

Here’s another one: