Leon Turnbull Photography

Here’s some more of those cool white popcorn flowers. I found these at Folsom Lake, on an outing the other day with my family. I was looking for the lupin (lupine? lupin? whatever) that grow there in abundance, but they were not yet blooming. They always seem to take longer to bloom there, and they probably need another month. I did find some other wildflowers, including these popcorn dudes.

Speaking of Folsom Lake, it is actually a lake right now. In fact, it is higher than I have seen it in many years. The latest reservoir statistics say Folsom Lake is at 74 percent capacity, and about 120 percent of average for this time of year. And don’t forget there is still plenty of snow in the mountains that has not melted yet. So that must bode well for our drought and summer water supply, correct? We’ll have plenty of water and more to make it through the hot summer months, correct? Well, actually …… no. According to the Folsom Telegraph, the powers that be are actually planning to drain the lake quite soon, and slap us Folsom residents with a stage 4 water alert for the summer! What? You gotta be kidding me, right? Nope. Apparently, they need to do this to flush the Delta so southern Californians don’t get salt water from the ocean in their water supply and also to help out all the fishies. Well, I wonder how necessary this drastic action really is, it doesn’t seem right to “waste” all that water. If it is so necessary, I don’t really have a problem with the concept of flushing the Delta. It is something that would happen naturally every year if there was no Folsom Dam. The real problem I have is with the city officials that have gotten us into this mess in the first place. They have built and built and built over the past 20 years or so, dramatically increasing the population here, but have not taken into account the water supply for all these new residents! Not one drop of new water has been added. So even though God has adequately supplied us with water this year, we still need more! An “average” year of water is no longer enough to satisfy all the people that live here now. I just can’t believe that the city planners could not understand this fundamental concept when they were doing all their building. Okay, end rant. Enjoy the flower picture. I’ll try to find a waterfall for my next post. 🙂

Here’s another view of Linda Falls in Angwin.

After Devil’s Punchbowl, we took a break for free champagne at Mumm’s Winery, where George is a member (the frequent flyer club of the winery?). George is rather funny. He and his wife buy about 4 bottles of wine a year, but the only reason they are a member of this winery is that they have an Ansel Adams art gallery here. We walked through the art gallery first, which was very nice. But it was rather funny because we were definitely the 3 scrubbiest looking people in the entire place. Then we sat down and drank a glass of the free champagne, another reason George likes being a member here: the complimentary drinks. Our waiter was also rather personable, asking about what we had been doing that morning. He surprisingly knew exactly where Linda Falls and Devil’s Punchbowl were, and had been there himself too.

Okay, so then it was off to Silver Creek Falls in Foote Botanical Preserve, another piece of land owned by Napa County Land Trust. It was the afternoon, and the sun was out, so pictures weren’t going to be very great. But I still wanted to see this waterfall, because it would probably be my one and only chance to do so. I wasn’t overly impressed with the falls.

The hike down to the falls was easy and pleasant. Many wildflowers were out. It is a beautiful area. The trail ends at the top of the waterfall, about a 100 ft. drop off a cliff. The reason I wasn’t impressed though was because the creek was just barely trickling. I had expected quite a lot more water flow in the creek, more like Linda Falls. But this is a much smaller drainage, and it had not rained here in about 10 days. This is a waterfall that must be seen immediately after a heavy rain. Another (small) problem is that you cannot actually see this waterfall. At all. The surrounding cliffs on both sides are incredibly steep with many trees and foliage blocking any view of the falls. We tried scrambling around to get a view of it, any view of it, but were quite unsuccessful. The only photo I was able to get of the falls was a very long distance view with my 400mm lens from the other side of the canyon.So instead of posting that awful photo, I’ll just post another one of Linda Falls. Much better.

We found these fabulous white wild flower fields in plenty of places on our recent little drive to Jackson. What the heck are they, anyway? I’m not too good at identifying flowers. I do know what a poppy is.
This particular place was on Hwy 124 near Ione. I kinda took a wrong turn on the drive back from Jackson. Somehow I got off Hwy 49 and ended up heading west on Hwy 88. How the heck did that happen? Well, fortunately I realized it before I had driven more than 50 miles (just kidding, it was a bit less than that). After looking at the map, I knew I could get back on track by heading up Hwy 124 through Ione. I had never been that way before. Who the heck would ever want to go that way? Unless he was stupid and made a wrong turn onto Hwy 88? Well, on the plus side, I found quite a few more wildflower fields along that route. With the sun still not quite down on the horizon, I stopped at this one particularly beautiful location and took some photos. I think I may actually go back to Ione someday to shoot more wildflowers. Go figure.

I think I am in denial. Denial of spring, that is. It happens most every year. I love the winter. I love the rain and snow. The more precipitation that we get, the better the waterfalls will be. So come March, I find myself hoping beyond hope that we will get another couple weeks of solid rain here. Another good storm or two. But alas, it is now the end of March, and so it seems spring has indeed arrived. Too early for me.

Well, I figured I had better just face up to it. Spring is here. What are you going to do about it, Leon? Over the last couple weeks, I’ve seen plenty of California poppy pictures, still trying to deny that they are really blooming right now. Get with it, man, the poppies are blooming. I gotta get out and take some photos of them now. Before it’s too late.

So with my family in tow, we drove down to Jackson on Hwy 49. I had seen some pics of nice poppy fields there. I thought we should go check it out. My wife was all over that. She loves that kind of thing. The kids were so-so about it. At least they weren’t rebelling at the idea. Actually, Nekoda likes flowers. She was perfectly fine with it. Jadon … well, like I said, he wasn’t rebelling.

When we got down there, we found one poppy field only. But it was definitely a gorgeous one, right along the highway. The poppies were abundant along the hillside. But it was a rather steep hillside. All I had on were my runners (that is, tennis shoes to you Americans). I managed to carefully climb up along the fence to get up close to the poppies and take some photos. It seems, though, that the best locations to shoot were on the other side of the fence (the grass is always greener, right?). I have definitely seen photographs from certain professional photographers who will remain nameless, taken from the other side of the fence. It may or may not have been okay to do it, but I didn’t really feel comfortable climbing over the fence, especially considering I would be in full view of anyone or certain authorities who might be driving by on the highway. Plus, it was a yucky barbed wire fence. So I took my photos from the less green side of the fence. It was still quite nice. Quite nice indeed.

After going to Linda Falls, we had plenty of time available that needed to be killed. I knew of another small waterfall in the Angwin area, and thought we might be able to get to it.

I wasn’t sure precisely where it was. I knew where the trail supposedly started. I wasn’t sure about access, and if it would be posted against trespassing. As it turned out, it wasn’t posted. The trail is on private land, but they allow access to the public. Gotta like that. I also wasn’t sure exactly where the waterfall was along the trail. It was like the blind leading the blind. We followed the trail down to the bottom of the canyon, and came to a 3 way junction. This was where I became unsure. Do we go left, right, or straight ahead? I had no idea. But the trail straight ahead looked most promising because it cut straight down directly to the creek very steeply. George and Paul stayed up top, while I went down to investigate. And very shortly, I came to the creek and the small waterfall. I knew this was the right spot because the creek dropped into a very cool looking swimming hole, sort of like a big amphitheatre or something. It was gorgeous. I called up to the others to come down to see it. To get down to the bottom of the falls, though, required crossing the creek above the falls on very slippery rocks, then following a path up and around and back down to the bottom of the falls. It was a bit tricky, but we managed, though George elected to stay behind for this part. Even though the falls is only 14 ft. high, it is definitely a very scenic one, and it is obvious why this is a popular swimming hole in the summer.