Leon Turnbull Photography

The day after Thanksgiving is my most favourite day of the year (to go hiking, that is). Everyone else is either sleeping in or out shopping. No one is out enjoying the beauty of nature. It has become my tradition now for the past few years to go out hiking on Black Friday, and I am loving it. But where should I go this year? I was a bit unprepared this year, and I didn’t really know where I wanted to go. I finally decided at the last minute to go up to McCloud to see the three waterfalls on the McCloud River. I had not yet gotten decent photos of the middle or upper falls. When I was here last time around, there was a truckload of snow on the ground and I had to walk in from the highway through the snow (without snowshoes), and I only made it to the lower falls. This time there was no snow, and it was of course easy to drive right in to all three of the waterfalls. I went first to Middle McCloud Falls, the biggest of the three (46 ft high). I arrived at about sunrise, and hiked down to the bottom of the falls with my dog Kaya (who also loves hiking on the day after Thanksgiving – actually, she loves hiking every day of the year). Kaya waited patiently with me in the cold (and it was quite cold) for the light to get a bit brighter in order for me to take a photo. There was quite a bit of water flowing over the waterfall, and I think for the most part these waterfalls flow very well all year long. But in the springtime, I’d be soaked standing at this location. Nonetheless, the rocks were still quite slippery here, and I did manage to put my foot into the drink. Kaya laughed at me when I did that (I’m pretty sure she was laughing, anyway). It was a beautiful morning in McCloud, and I saw no one out hiking all day.

A friend of mine told me he was at the Old Salmon Falls site at Folsom Lake recently, and he told me it wasn’t a lake there anymore, it was a river, and it was beautiful. I thought he was exaggerating, so I didn’t pay much attention to him at the time. But I went there this past weekend, and he was right! It is not that I didn’t believe him. I just thought he meant that the lake was super low (which I already knew), and that it just seemed like it was a river. But actually, it was a river. The lake was gone. And the river was flowing. It was flowing the way God created it to be. It was flowing the way it was when there were people living along here less than 100 years ago. And it was beautiful.

Of course, that does not change the fact that just downstream from here is a huge reservoir that is nearly empty (22% of capacity). And if we don’t get an above average rainfall this year, then we will be facing a severe drought here next summer in California. So from that perspective, it is pretty darn sad. Nonetheless, it was quite interesting and exciting to see a river flowing along here right now. I have never seen this before. But I’m also sure it won’t be the last time I see that either. I am firmly convinced that a severe drought in California is inevitable in the near future. It may not be this year or the next year, and I am praying fervently that we do indeed get our rain this winter. But I do believe a drought is inevitable. We have now had two straight years of drought here (below average precipitation). From 1987-1992, we had six straight years of drought. At the end of that period, the lake level was about as low as it is now. The population level has increased dramatically here in the past 20 years, and the water supply has not increased at all. Where is all the water going to come from for all these new people? Where are the brilliant city planners who thought about that? An extended multi-year drought is not at all uncommon in California. It happened from ’87-’92 and it happened multiple times in the past century (1928-34, 1943-51, 1959-62, 1976-77). It certainly will happen again in the future sometime. We may or may not be in the middle of an extended drought right now. Again, I am praying we are not. And so should we all.

Anyway, enough of the rambling, eh. I went back to Old Salmon Falls to do some bird watching. I saw less birds feeding here along the water than the previous time I was here, I think. Not sure why that would be. But I did see a few of these pretty little birds, and I believe they are rock wrens. This one little guy actually let me get quite close to him. I was following him around for awhile, and he pretty much ignored me as I clicked away at him from fairly close range. I did not bring my tripod with me this time, and I think that also helped me get closer to some of the birds. They didn’t think I was gonna try to whack them or anything like that.
Here’s a couple more:

I mentioned in a priori post that I felt more into bird watching on our first evening in Carlsbad than going to watch the sunset. At first, it didn’t look like it would be much of a sunset because there were no clouds in the sky. Well, I’m not sure what happened, but I was sure mistaken about that. It turned out to be a spectacular sunset that evening. And here I was, over at Baquitos Lagoon watching birds, and no good location there to watch the sun go down. I could see that it was going to be a good one too. I did take this snapshot from the lagoon. This shot is straight out of my camera, just a quick handheld snap with my big 100-400 lens on the camera. It actually turned out quite a lot nicer than I expected. The bird at the top is a nice touch. I think it may be a hawk. There was one circling overhead at the time, and I was trying to get photos of it (though I’m not positive this is the same bird).

After this, I went back to collect my wife and kids who were enjoying the beautiful sunset from the beach. By the time I arrived there, the sun had already set, but there was still a lot of beautiful color in the sky. So I grabbed my camera and tripod out of the car, ran down to the beach, passed by my wife and kids with nary a hello, found a semi-interesting spot along the shoreline, set up my camera, and started taking photos. I’m not sure what happened with those shots though, because they did not turn out very well. I may or may not post that shot from the beach. But I definitely liked this quick snap from the lagoon much better.

I mentioned before a few months ago that I had some big news to share and a big sale (one reason why I was able to buy my 100-400L lens). Well, now I can tell you what that news is.

I have a new book published! Well, not exactly. It is not my book. But this new book does feature about 80 or so of my waterfall photographs. It is called “America’s Top 100 Western Waterfalls” by Richard Beisel Jr, and you can buy it from Amazon here or maybe in your local bookstore if you can find it there.

Not all the waterfall photos in the book are mine. As I said, he used about 80 of my photos, so a good chunk of them are mine. I was happy with the print quality for most of the photos, but a few of the older ones were taken before I had a decent camera. This photo of Vernal Falls is just one that is featured in the book that I am very pleased with.

About the author, a few years ago, Richard Beisel developed a new scientific classification system for rating waterfalls, and he had it accepted by the International Standards Organization. It is not a perfect system, but it is a consistent and mathematical method for classifying waterfalls. He explains this more in the book. He has published a couple books previously, “International Waterfall Classification System”, and “America’s Top 100 Eastern Waterfalls”. He contacted me about using my photos for his western book because he did not have the inventory of photos of western waterfalls that I have (since he lives in the east). I did give him some suggestions on which waterfalls to include in this book, but it is his book and his waterfalls included.

So if you like waterfalls, be sure to buy the book. It is a pretty decent waterfall companion book.

We arrived at Carlsbad in southern California pretty early in the afternoon. We checked into our hotel and told our excited kids we were going to Legoland the next day. Tara wanted to keep it a surprise from them as long as possible. So we drove all the way down south with them thinking we were going to see some waterfall. But you can’t keep things from Jadon too long. He is a heckuva little reading machine now. He spotted a sign on the road that said “Legoland” as we were pulling into Carlsbad. The surprise was over. He was as excited as fox in a henhouse. He had been begging us to go to Legoland for at least a year. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to go this year. But as things turned out, due to my job situation, we are no longer able to go to Canada this Christmas, so that opened up this chance to go to Legoland this month.

After check-in, we figured we could go to the beach and see the sunset. But I wasn’t really into seeing sunset on the beach this evening (crazy, I know). There didn’t seem to be many clouds in the sky (wrong), and I was more into bird watching this evening. So I dropped the wife and kids off at the beach, and I went to Batiquitos Lagoon to do some bird watching with my big lens. It was not too bad, I saw egrets, heron, and a hawk, plenty of ducks, and lots of little birds such as this one (which I believe, is a house finch). The problem with this particular lagoon is that the path does not follow the water edge very closely, so it was difficult to get any close-up shots of the bigger birds. But this little guy perched himself really close to where I was and I could get a nice shot of him and his pretty colors. There were also quite a lot of people walking on the path, which is something that should be expected, but I would have definitely preferred more solitude. Not one of them so much as said a single word (such as even a hello) to me. Is it because people are not as friendly in southern California? or is it because they just thought I was very weird walking around with a big camera and tripod? Probably the latter.