Websailor's Picture Gallery

I guess it's obvious I like visiting the National Parks. I love the outdoors and the beautiful places we have in this country.

The East Bay Region in California has some wonderful parks, on a par with State Parks. Since they are local, they get a lot of use, including by us.

Cruises are lots of fun - you get to eat all this delicious food, you only unpack your bags once, and everything is done for you. You just enjoy the new place you're visiting!

Mr. and Mrs. Quail brought their cute and LARGE (in number) family around to our backyard. It was so funny to see all the tiny little babies scurrying around!

We hopped into the City on a beautiful day to see the Tall Ships that came in for the San Francisco Festival of Sail. I got to try out my Pentax Optio Z10 in the outdoors.

We went on a camping trip to Mendocino to Russian Gulch State Park. It was cool and foggy, but a welcome relief from all the smoke from the firesd raging in California right now. I took lots of nice wild flower and animal pictures, not so many scenery pictures.

The WWII bombers and one P-51 airplane flew around our house on Memorial Day. I just added these pictures to the existing Airplanes folder since they are the same planes.

Our neighbors had a missing light fixture on the side of their house... we noticed a swarm of bees had decided to move in! The streaks in the last two photos are the honey bees flying around.

These are pictures from the Alaska Cruise we took in May 2008. They have not yet been gone thru, so there are tons of pictures!

The DVC Philharmonic Orchestra held a concert (selections from Carmen) with the Truckee Community Chorus up at Lake Tahoe. It was a great concert and we got to stay at the chorus members houses. In between practicing, we went for a walk along the shore at Lake Tahoe.

Another little exercise hike in Mt Diablo State park - this one on the Donner Canyon trail, which goes along Donner Creek.

Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve had an Open house for the expand museum in the Atlas Mine, so I tokk a "little" hike, only 12.5 miles from Clayton to go to it. It was really neat to see this sand mine - it is huge inside!!! I had fun talking to the various docents at the mine.

It was a sunny day, and I needed exercise, so I went for a hike in Mt Diablo State Park. .... to the top! The Mitchell Canyon Trail starts at about 600 ft elevation and you climb, climb, climb up to the peak at 3,849 ft - one of the Bay Area's toughest hikes. It well worth it as the views are stupendous!

This was an interesting day on the mountain - sunny when I started, cold and breezy at the top since clouds were gathering, then on the way down I got snowed on, then hailed on (eneough that I stopped under a tree for a bit), and then, lower in elevation, rained on. But I had a great time!

Then after I got home, we got treated to a very interesting sunset with clouds.

It was a beautiful day today, so I went for a hike in Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve. I wondered if I could make it all the way to Black Diamond Mines, given the short time I had and knowing that the trail all uphill from Clayton to the park boundary.

Since I needed the exercise, I went for it! Good decision since it was a very pretty hike with lots of wildlife sightings.

For my birthday, we spent some time in Yosemite National Park. A big storm had just gone through and dumped snow in the Park, and we were in the tail end of another storm as we traveled there. Fortunately we did not need to put snow chains on, but it did snow that day while we walked around the valley.

I took a hike up the Upper Yosemite Falls trail and had a terrific time hiking in the snow.

Once again, we had a wonderful time

On the way back from Yosemite National Park, we stopped at Khights Ferry, which I last visited back in ~1980. It's quite a bit more developed now, with the old historic buildings described and open to look into, and with a very nice Visitor Center.

The area seems to be a mix of organizations that maintain it, but the main group is the US Army Corp Of Engineeers, Stanislaus River Parks

We woke up this morning and it was a wee bit foggy outside....just the tops of the trees were showing among all the houses below in the city. It wa a lovely sight. Eventually the fog started getting warmed up by the sun and lifted up to our level.

It was even better than the fog we had in January!

On February 20th, 2008, we were fortunate enough to get to see a full lunar eclipse from our backyard. This was a neat experience and I can understand how it freaked people out in ancient times. My picture taking of it isn't too good - the camera just did not want to focus on the moon. Oh well... This is the NASA Eclipse Home Page for that particular lunar eclipse.

The fog in the city was very pretty this morning. It was fun to watch it move around.