Leon Turnbull Photography

On Saturday I had plans to get up for a very early morning sunrise hike in the mountains. But I just couldn’t get up and out of bed. I just wasn’t into it, and just felt more like sleeping in. That put me in a bit of a sour mood for the rest of the day because I knew I should have forced myself to get up. I’m sure I would have had a fabulous morning had I done so.

Well, if I couldn’t get out for sunrise, there was always a possibility for sunset, if the weather co-operated. And at first, it looked pretty interesting. There was a lot of cloud cover, and we even had rain, thunder, and lightning throughout the morning. And it was still very warm out, hot even. Strange stuff. We went up to the El Dorado Hills library, where there was some sort of pirate festival going on. It was kinda strange too, but the kids enjoyed it. Jadon and Nekoda dressed up as pirates themselves, and they looked very cool. We met up there with our friends from church so the four kids could enjoy the festivities together, then we went out to lunch together.

In the evening, my wife had a planned “girls night out”, so I had the kids by myself. I had hopes to take them somewhere easy enough to enjoy the sunset, and I could take photographs. But in the afternoon, the clouds dissipated, at least in the direction where the sun was setting. It did not look like it would be a very good sunset after all, so I told the kids we weren’t going on any hike after all, and I said I would just take them out for ice cream. They liked that, but while we were enjoying that together, I had a change of heart. I thought maybe the sunset wouldn’t be too bad after all. There was still time, so we whipped on back home, I grabbed my camera, and we drove out to Folsom Lake. It is a bit of a walk from the parking area down to the lake, and by now it was almost sunset time, so I told the kids they had to walk as fast as they could to the lake. They did, and we made it in good time with only one fall along the way (Nekoda). I set up along the lake with my camera, while the kids gathered some rocks to throw into the lake (away from where I was shooting, I told them). It turned out to be a very beautiful sunset after all, and this is no doubt the best photo I have taken of Folsom Lake to date. I was very pleased that we were able to get out this evening.

Folsom Lake is pretty low again, now at 44 percent capacity. This is not really surprising or alarming, as it is now the end of summer. It is still higher than it was at this time last year. Nonetheless, it is a huge difference from earlier this spring when it was almost full. The Old Salmon Falls bridge is visible again, you can see it in this photo. This location, Salmon Falls, used to be an old townsite of course, that was flooded when the Folsom Dam was built. You can still see remnants of the old townsite in addition to the notable bridge. I mention this all because of my daughter Nekoda. She is so funny sometimes. While I was taking photographs, the kids were (in addition to throwing rocks) discussing the fate of the people who used to live here. Nekoda had it all figured out. Apparently, wolves and tigers came down from the hills, and threw all the people into the lake where they then drowned. Their footprints are still all over the place. Actually, they are really just dog prints but don’t tell her that.