Old Mining Trails

We have been on a few walks these last couple of weeks, nothing too amazing to report, other then a couple praying mantis and some nice Autumn colors. The first two pictures below were taken at Empire Mine's Penn Gate Trail, while the lower was on Independence Trail off Highway Forty-Nine. 

We went to Penn Gate on the first day it rained, although it barely counted as that. I had to struggle with the low light to get a successful shot, but the silhouette one, I think, came out particularly monstrous. 

Independence is in a sad state right now, I don't believe we usually take late summer walks there, so maybe this happens regularly, but the last time we were there the waterfall was completely dry, only a few pools of stagnant water scattered down the hillside. It was depressing and disheartening, but at least I spotted a praying mantis with some of the best colors I've ever seen.

The Gold Hill Trail is on the other side of the Empire Mine property and affords some interesting views as most of the trails take you uphill through oak and pine. The path on the far left often gives us some excellent mushroom and fungus, even when it's mostly dry. This time was no exception, but the light was too low for anything to come out in focus.

We've  returned to the Penn Gate Trail a couple times since the rain, first to explore the dried creek bed and then to explore the tailings and old pond. I got the chance to see a squirrel skydive from the middle of the very tall pine, falling spread eagle through the air to land with a bounce atop the mountain misery (Chamaebatia foliolosa). We clambered around the tailings for a time and found some really interesting rocks, then wandered passed the old chimney towards the dry pond.

We found a few interesting things down the creek bed, although I'm sure we weren't the first to go exploring with treasures in mind. There was a half buried brick in the middle of the stream near some ivy and other plants that suggested the remnants of an old garden. And I have found old clusters of strange vegetation in areas not too far from where we were. I know there used to be houses for the workers in this area, hence the remnants of the old chimney earlier on the trail. There was also the usual twisted sheets of rusted metal, there from some old piece of machinery or siding. In this county you're almost guaranteed to see some form of rusted metal or piping while out on a hike, especially since most of our parks and trails are established around old mining operations.

We were able to forge down stream for about forty minutes before it began to delve through and under blackberry brambles, forcing us to stop.

While last nights walk was not spectacular by any means; we were too tired for exploration and there too late for good lighting. I did get some nice shots of the shift plants are making towards fall.

The days feel too short now, golden hour slipping passed while I'm still thinking it's midday. The air is warm, but there's a promise in the evening sky. People are saying the rains are coming, I hope they're right. We had a lightening storm here last Friday that took a long time to bring the rain, and when it did it lasted for less then an hour. October hasn't been cold or wet since I was a child, when the onset of night was met with anticipation, not dread to be that much closer to the next day. Here's to summer, and to rain and snow.

For our next post we will be going up into the mountains yet again, for a misty hike that afforded us a chance to see a very rare member of the California community.

The Last Swim of Summer

I adore summer, but for many years it was not my favorite season, possibly even my least favorite. Now that I'm free of the looming threat of school and physically in better condition the I have been since sixth grade, summer is a too-short extravaganza of late evening walks, farmers markets, and river visits.

So when September gave us a few days of over one hundred degree weather, I jumped at the opportunity to visit Bridgeport for a final swim. The day was surprisingly calm, the air hanging heavy in the canyon as we curved our way down towards the Yuba. Air conditioner off, windows down, letting the heat prepare us for the water.

The cicadas were out in full force, their buzzing a constant background as we parked and walked down through the shady woods and out to the river.

We'd gotten here a little later in the day then usual, and found our favorite spot was taken by seemingly the only other people there, so we moved to a small strip of sand down stream and settled in. Swimming up and down the river, exploring alcoves and inlets and startling a roosting mallard. 

Frogs were everywhere, you could hear them plopping into the water whenever you approached the rivers edge, their startled cries sounding more like kittens then amphibians. But they were considerably less bold then their mountain cousins, and try as I might I was not able to catch one willing to stay still long enough for a picture.

After swimming for a couple hours we packed up and moved, finding a willow-sheltered bank to investigate and photograph. I've been experimenting with perspective shots lately, finding tiny worlds when I lower  my camera to well below eye level. I'm often surprised by what ends up in frame in those shots.

I was reluctant to leave, knowing that this would be the last day of the year I spent splashing and swimming through the Yuba. Even if we get a heat wave in October, the sun is not in the sky long enough to warm the river water. 

I stood in the sunlit waters and lowered my camera till I could feel the river graze the back of my hands. I angled it down slightly and let it find it's own focus. Then I moved further away, into one of the small, overgrown streams that feed the Yuba. The grasses and duckweed created little aquatic landscapes, an old cicada skin clung to one stem, looking like an alien carapace. 

The paths were quiet, no families or couples with the kids at school, just crickets and cicadas and dry, still heat. The air was dusty and scented with the beginning of fall. The walnuts and blackberries changing first, bright exclamations of yellow and scarlet among a deeper green.

We left the river slowly, taking Bitney Springs back home, to see the late summer vineyards and rolling hills drenched in sunlight, tired in that way you can only achieve from swimming against currents and propelling yourself under water. We'll be back again soon, I"m sure, but not like this, not till next year. 

Next post will be a summary of the last few walks we took at Independence Trail and Empire Mine. With some praying mantis guests as well. 

Bridgeport in Late Summer

I've been wanting to catch the sunset at Bridgeport, in South Yuba River State Park for some time, so after a visit with my mom and grandma, The Man and I headed down Pleasant Valley Road, off Highway Twenty towards the end of golden hour. The drive isn't terribly long, but the road twists and turns it's way down into the river canyon, and is just long enough to start making you carsick, if you are the kind of person who that happens to (and I am). If you continue, the road will take you to French Corral, one of the first mining camps to spring up along the the San Juan River Channel. There's a Wells Fargo built in 1850 and a few remnants of a once more inhabited town.

We parked off the road and  walked down trail through warm forests of cottonwood and willow and out to the river.

It was quiet, once school starts the activity at the river stills to a normal pace. Crickets, frogs, and late evening birdsong filled the air, Elusive fish vied for insects, sending tiny ripples across the still, deep stretch of the waters.

I set up my tripod and got to work, while The Man explored, and from the distant splash I heard, took a swim. I was trying out a new filter, and got a few images that I thought captured a very nice warm glow.

I think if I had fiddled with the ISO more it would have resulted in a less saturated, golden green color, but I rather liked it, so I took a few shots facing westward at different exposures then made the above composite image. I'm in the process of teaching myself how to do that, so it's not perfect, but I'm still glad I did it.

The sun was sinking fast, but the hills in the east were still saturated in light, with the moon rising beyond. The birds had begun to quiet, only a few distant calls as they settled into their nests and boughs.

We were making our reluctant way out when my husband spotted a single deer, foraging among the rocks a short distance from us. A quick lens change and we settled back in to watch the creature make it's way past us and towards the water.

Heading back out again, we stopped for a moment to speak among an area of low hanging wild grape vines, making the section of trail almost tunnel like. As we stood there, bats began to descend from the branches, swooping down and around us and through the cavern-like path, out into the clearing beyond. They flew so close we could feel the wind from them at times, and one even flew between us, only inches from our faces. We stood quiet still in the moonlit forest and let the colony fly past, then followed them out into the open air and back to our car. 

The next batch of images are ready to go, so hopefully I can get the next post up in less then a week, but I've now probably jinxed myself. I've got a couple opportunities to sell my pictures available, and the novel is always pulling at my brain and distracting me from eating and sleeping. Writing here is an incredible relief, because I don't have to make anything up. Creating a world from the ground up (or from the starstuff of the universe and out) makes my brain feel like a pancake at times, and photography gives me a break from worry over that and my regular work.

Thanks for reading, next post we're back into the mountains for round two with the sand pond and Sardine Lakes, as well as a beautiful visit to an aspen surrounded meadow.

Mushroom Hunting in Nevada County- Part One: Gateway Park

A Note: This started as simply a post about Gateway Park in Penn Valley, but due to illness and a busy schedule I was very much delayed in its completion. In that time The Man and I went on several walks in search of one of our favorite photography subjects; mushrooms. As such I've accumulated many images of fungus and the places we've found them, so I've decided to make a two part post (or three) about our search for mushrooms. So here we go...


Thanksgiving Day, and the month of November really, can be absolutely chaotic and stressful, especially since I have a tendency to get colds fairly often this time of year. I am in fact, wrapping one up right now, but I was feeling healthy enough for tackling (alongside my husband) a full Thanksgiving meal, a birthday cake and two pies, and we're squeezing in a couple nature walks to help alleviate the stress.

Actual Thanksgiving day is celebrated at my Grandmothers house in Penn Valley. We had a good, wet day earlier in the week, followed by warmer weather, so we decided to walk off the meal over at Western Gateway Park, located on Penn Valley Drive.

Things were looking a little drier then we had expected when we first walked over, but, just a little way into the nature/disc gold area proved to be more fruitful then we could ever imagine.

At first there was only some dry looking shelf fungus, but a closer look at the leaf litter revealed a wealth of growth. We told my family we'd be gone for about forty-five minutes, it turned out we were gone for over two hours.

I've spent more time at gateway then I can count, and it's changed considerably over the years. But if you can get there on a quiet day in fall or winter it is worth the exploration. While wildlife has suffered due to "recreational development" The oaks are beautiful and the fungus variety is fantastic. It's also a great place for bird watching. Songbirds, woodpeckers and migratory water fowl can be seen, as well as the occasional hawk.

It's my hope that eventually Penn Valley will take responsibility for the acres they have and start tending to it and it's wildlife, instead of paving over more of it, as they already have.

But anyway, back to fungal exploration. 

The undergrowth here can get pretty tangled and while they do clear the poison oak out on occasion, you should still keep that in mind if you're allergic, and the blackberry brambles are pretty much everywhere, so if you plan on going off trail you should be wearing jeans.

We wandered farther and farther into the trees, every time we thought we had found the best examples of mushrooms we would be getting, we continued down a side path or into a field and found more.

I'm not sure if I'm just forgetting, but I feel like I never saw this variety as a child or adolescent. Chances are I was just never paying enough attention, but either way, The Man and I were astounded by the size and amount of mushrooms we came across.

There are several paths the diverge from the main one in the nature area, but most are small loops that will take you through a copse of young oak and back to the main trail. There is, however, an old loop near the back of the park that takes you around to a clearing, if you cross that clearing there is a fairly less traveled path that leads you along the outer edge of the parks property.

We were exploring some fallen tree limbs in that area when The Man saw a bird land in an oak not far from where we stood. Peering into the limbs I could just make out the form of a large bird of prey. Slowly we inched towards it, making barely a sound besides the click and quiet beep of the camera. Occasionally it would turn towards us, though it seemed more interested in a tree full of noisy birds a few yards away.

Finally, we stood almost underneath the edge of the tree it was in.

We found out later, from my mom (Hey mom!), that it was a Coopers Hawk. I've never been this close to a wild bird of prey before, we felt very lucky. It watched us for a short time as we stood at the edge of the tree before disappearing further into the wood. The light was beginning to sink below the tree line, kissing the top of Crows Nest to the west and illuminating the glass on houses in the eastern hills, so we turned our path towards Deer Creek and the baseball diamonds.

Then we came to the Dog Park that was built a few years ago. It's sort of a sad place, in my opinion. It used to be a horse arena where I first learned to ride, now it's a couple chain link paddocks with dirty gravel on the ground and no trees for shade, or any plants for that matter. Just a black awning type tent and a few plastic chairs. I hope that they plan to add a few tress in there and maybe some nice benches. I also noticed clearing to the side of it of much of the vegetation. My only hope is that they don't intend to pave over anymore of the woodlands, as they already paved a road out to the dog park. For people who don't want to walk there dogs through a few hundred yards of open oak lands to a dog park. 

Sorry, it bothers me.

But back to the mushrooms!

Near where the Mother Goose Park used to be we found this monstrosity.

It's hard to tell but this thing was easily bigger then both my hands splayed out. And brilliantly colored as well. We were very lucky to find it unharmed as well, since it was in a relatively well traveled area of the park.

Onward we journeyed to the baseball diamonds, where, on the far side they often dump piles of wood chips and other debris. There wasn't too much to be seen there, just a multitude of what I assume were tiny mycena. 

Some of these little guys were so tightly clustered together they were crushing each other as they grew. I lay pretty much flat on the ground and in many undignified ways to get some good angles of this bunch, thank goodness no one was around to see it. But by then it was pretty late, and time to get back to grandma's house. So of we went, feeling almost like we were ready for dessert.

So there's that, part one complete. Next we will be covering a different area of Empire Mine, and also St. Patrick's Cemetery in Grass Valley. There's a few storms ahead of us, but after that we're hoping to get out to lower Independence trail is search of the elusive Lions Mane. Happy Hiking everybody! 

Empire Mine- Penn Gate Trail

This time around my husband and I took a hike very close to home, Penn Gate is located on East Empire Street and is a very popular shared trail for hikers, bikers, runners and horse back riders. There hasn't been a time we've been there alone, but everyone is very pleasant and there's usually some friendly canines to meet as well.

Things are a little dry and dusty up at the staging area but about a half a mile in or so you climb a hill then descend back down into cool, shaded forests.

The trails here are especially pretty in the fall, plenty of bright yellow foliage to contrast with dark tree limbs and green pines. And today was an especially nice day, after some surprisingly chilly ones.

The Man and I were here for a specific reason, mushroom hunting. We'd found a place off the beaten path earlier this year that had yielded some awesome variety, and with the rains last week we were eager to see what had bloomed since.

While the place had hoped to find riddled with fungus proved less then fruitful, the forest itself was literately covered with tiny mushrooms. I can't claim to know much about the names of the different types I'm showing here, but I'll do my best with Google to find out what they're called.

Bird Nest Fungus

Spiny Puffball

It's been about a week since it rained, but the mornings have been frosty and wet, and the forest was still surprisingly damp. We went towards the back of the park and explored what were probably game trails, getting scratched up by blackberries. But everywhere we looked were mushrooms, on the path, off the path, in the trees, under trees.

These little guys are from the mycena family (we believe) and were obviously enacting some hostile take over of the entire forest. There were areas where it was tricky to walk because there were so many underfoot. We trekked through the woods, exploring the creek bed and taking game trails here and there to see what we could see.

The weather was absolutely perfect, I think mid-fall and spring are the best times to visit Empire Mine, we found a couple seasonal stream beds that are probably gorgeous when there's actually water around. Not mush else to say about this hike, we were out and back in about two hours and saw multiple types of mushroom and fungus, too many to show here without turning this into nothing but a image post, but here are a few more I just had to share, because there are awesome.

We've got a full week ahead with family obligations and the like, though I'm hoping to squeeze in a trip to Gateway Park in Penn Valley and one more hike before Thanksgiving. The Man and I have a tradition of going on hikes after any major holiday spent with family, and Turkey Day may very well see us down at Bridgeport looking for Bald Eagles. Otherwise the next hike will most likely be Independence Trail or Upper Humbug, before the snows move in.