Leon Turnbull Photography

Here is the standard view of 550 ft. Grouse Falls, from the Overlook viewpoint. It is certainly a spectacular waterfall, even when viewing it from across the canyon, a half-mile away.

I arrived here at about sunrise. It is an hour and a half drive from my home, and I was up at 4AM to get here in time. I was making great time until I got to within a 1 minute drive from the trailhead parking area. Two big trees were down in the middle of the road. It was a very narrow section of road, and so I had to turn my big gas guzzling SUV around to go back. I felt like I was in that scene from Austin Powers, when he was trying to turn his cart around in that narrow hallway. Well, I think I did a bit better job than he did. I parked the SUV along the side of the road, and walked the rest of the way.

If you are thinking this sure does not look like 550 ft. Grouse Falls, you will be forgiven. Is Leon off his rocker? What is he talking about now? This is actually the bottom 83 ft. section of spectacular Grouse Falls. You can’t see the upper section of the falls from here, but it is just above this waterfall.

If you’ve ever been to the Grouse Falls overlook, you may wonder how I could ever get down to the bottom. It is incredibly steep (1000 ft. down in about a half-mile), and incredibly brushy (manzanita galore). I’ve been down there twice now. The first time, I did not get any view of Grouse Falls at all. This time, I was determined. My goal and great desire was to get a close-up view of the entire 550 ft. of Grouse Falls. I was denied. I came to this dead end with towering cliffs on either side of the creek. No views of the big waterfall could be found. But I did get to this fantastic waterfall, the bottom 83 ft. of Grouse Falls.

It was worth the effort. But going back up that half-mile was a struggle. It took about an hour and a half to climb back up the mountain. Talk about steep. The GPS was a necessity as well. It was so brushy and there was so much dense tree growth, it was impossible to see where the overlook was until I was almost right back to it. I only knew where to go because the GPS was pointing me in the right direction. There was a lot of poison oak down there as well. I know what you are thinking. Here we go again. I could have sworn that the last time I was down there, there was no oak. In fact, I’m about 90 percent sure there was none. That is one of the reasons I wanted to try again this year. But this time, I found a lot of it. I was careful to avoid touching it, and I bathed myself thoroughly when I got home. I think I avoided getting it this time. Whew.

Bassi Falls crashes 109 ft. over a granite cliff up off Ice House Rd. near Pollock Pines, east of Sacramento. Wow! What an incredible waterfall to visit in the spring. I’ve been here a number of times before, but I had never seen it with so much water flowing over the falls. It was unbelievably awesome! I would say it is at peak flow right now with all the snow melting in the mountains, and if you live in the area and have never seen Bassi Falls at peak flow, I highly recommend making the very easy trip out to see it.

I was here at sunset, which is the best time to photograph the falls, with the nice warm evening light shining on it. I got right in the creek to take this photo. And boy, was it ever freezing cold! Worth it though, to get this photo.

I also went up to the top of the falls, which I also recommend doing. It is amazing to stand at the brink of this waterfall, as it hurtles over the cliff. It is dangerous though, so be very careful if you go. You don’t want to slip and fall in the creek up there, that is for sure.

This image of the Pt. Bonita Lighthouse was taken after dark, from the Marin Headleands. The exposure time was about 90 seconds. You can see the lights of San Francisco in the background. It is definitely a neat area to visit. We drove here after the sunset at Rodeo Beach. I’ve been wanting to get a night shot of this lighthouse for awhile now. I finally had a chance to do so this time.

Well, here you are. What you all have been waiting for. Our big whale watching trip in San Francisco last weekend, to the Farallon Islands. How was it?

It was great, no doubt. As you may know, we originally planned this trip back in January on our birthday weekend. But it got postponed, due to some crazy weather happenings at the time. So this past weekend, we tried again. This time, the weather was sunny and warm.

The day started off a bit crazy. We had to be at the boat dock at 7:30AM. But I got lost on our way there, and I had forgotten to bring a map of the city. After asking someone for directions, we finally made it there, just in time. The second problem was the parking. There was supposed to be free parking at the dock, but it was all reserved. The “leader” of our group didn’t really know anything about parking. Frankly, I was quite pertubed about that. I had to find a parking spot on the street a couple blocks away. I made it back to the dock in the nick of time, before the boat was to leave.

My wife, Tara, was on board and had picked out a spot for us at the front. There was not much room on the ship for sitting down, really, as there were about 30 or so others in our group and the boat was fairly small. I wanted to sit up front for best photo ops, and that is where we stayed for the ride out to the Farallon Islands. But it was a very long ride out there. They are located 25 miles out in the ocean. On a clear day, you can see them from the mainland. But although it was sunny on this day, it was also hazy, and you couldn’t see the islands until we were almost there. It took about an hour to ride out there, and the further we got out in the ocean, the swells started getting a bit crazier and crazier. We were tossing up and down quite a lot. Sea sickness was not an issue for us (we took our Dramamine beforehand). But we did get splashed quite a bit, sitting up in the front of the boat. A couple times, we got drenched. But it was fun sitting up there. Most of the others on board decided to sit in the back of the boat, safe and warmer.

Out “leader” told us to keep a watch out for whales, that we could see them at any time. But we did not see any until well after we arrived at the islands. I was definitely wondering if we would even see any at all this day. What we did see on the trip out to the islands were: seals, porpoises, sea lions (California and Steller), and many birds including cormorants, common murres, and the pigeon guillemot. What we did not see were: great white shark, puffin, humpback or blue whales, all of which I really really really wanted to see, but I guess we were there at the wrong time of year to see these creatures.

As for whales, it was the right time of year to see the grey whale. After arriving at the islands, we made our way around to the south end of the islands, and voila. There they were. My wife thinks there were more than 2, but I think there was just a couple of them there. They were just swimming around in that area (feeding, I suppose). They would surface for a few minutes, blow water out their holes, then flick their tails up in the air and dive down underwater for about 5 minutes. We sat watching them like this for about an hour or more. Mostly, they would surface quite a ways from the boat. I took many pictures, but they were just a bit far away for the lens that I had. One time, however, and only once, a whale surfaced very close to the boat. The photos you see here were all taken during that close encounter event, all within about one minute. It was very cool. I was using a 70-200mm lens with a 1.4x extender for my photos. I really wished I had a longer lens for this trip, but I’m not a rich man. Next time, maybe, I’ll be able to take a bigger lens.

On the return trip to San Francisco, we spotted another whale just outside the Golden Gate Bridge. We stopped to watch it for 20 minutes or so. There was a lot of boat traffic in this area and once, the whale surfaced very close to a sailboat. I was watching the boaters through my telephoto lens, and I don’t think they even noticed the whale at all, even though it was probably within 100 feet of them. There was also a heckuva lot of porpoises and sea lions in this area. Some of those came very close to our boat as well. It is rather difficult to get a photo of them, though I did get one of a sea lion close to the boat.

Here’s another whale pic:

And a collage of the same whale, shots taken in quick succession: