Moments in Dirt and Ink

Fort Humboldt State Historic Park (map link) I checked the Calparks site for Fort Humboldt to see that the park is currently "open at limited capacity", whatever that means. Perhaps no school bus trips will be around? There's only about a dozen parking spots for the public, and none of them has been blocked off. Then there's a list of what is open including the museum! So I said time to go again so that this time I can wander the museum. I neglected to get suspicious that the list also contains "beaches", which is an interesting inclusion since there are no beaches connected to the fort. The picnic area at Fort Humboldt. Not all of this was parade grounds at the time of the fort. I decided to loop around clockwise, going on the self guided interpretive trail first. This has the advantage of getting the signs in the order they were meant to be read. Once or twice, they assume the reading order, so it makes a little more sense. It also comes very ...

Fort Humboldt State Historic Park Click for map. Being both free to visit and over half covered with a lawn, the old fort is to some extent just another city park, but with better direction signs on the road and historic exhibits around the edges. There's also a few museum areas, but they weren't open, so I probably got to experience less than half of what the State Historic Park really has to offer. Lots of picnic tables making this a prime place for a lunch stop with many added featurs. I headed out of the parking lot past the administrative offices (the North Coast Redwoods District office is also there) to some exhibits at the north end of the park to find they're not actually about the fort at all. They are all about area logging. Passing by one of two "tractors" for moving giant trees around. The trail crosses tracks that come out of either side of a barn and the barn holds a couple of old engines. They're a bit hard to see in the barns...

Angeles National Forest Locate the trailhead. I was hoping to be going backpacking soonish, so needed to have a few hikes in the last little while.  Having frittered away Saturday, there was still Sunday.  But I'd already said I'd go to a lunch party and so the day began with baking bread to have something to take.  The day didn't start all that early, I admit.  Then there was the eating and talking and eventually the heading out.  I grabbed the water and trimmed down sketching tools and something warm and headed out to the end of Mt. Wilson Toll Rd., finally starting up it at nearly 5:30 PM.  I headed out by the gate that would be closed by the time I got back. The clouds were thick overhead, but not continuous over the whole sky.  As I rounded one curve shortly after the bridge, I noticed a bright form, mostly of buildings, off in the distance.  A fair bit later when the lay of the land was better visible, I sketched the oasis ...

Angeles National Forest I decided to head on up to Henninger Flats along the toll road this evening. I need to walk more, after all. Just past the two mile marker, I saw a nice tree full of flowers and sketched it. A flowering tree along the road. From there, I continued up to Henninger and a little bit further. There were three deer in the campground and another one just outside it. I went on up to where a road heads off to the west, quickly splitting into a numbered route and a road to a helicopter pad. By then the sun was set. I'd driven up to the start, hiked about three miles uphill, and got a sketch done in just a little more than two hours. I took a good look around because it was still time for colors in the sky and I'd not been up that far and the road had just reached the edge of a ridge with the far side having a little different character from the side I'd been up. Then I hiked back down. It was shortly after 9PM when I got back...

Angeles National Forest Locate the trailhead. I decided to have an afternoon/evening hike up to Henninger Flats for sunset and drawing and such. There are claims that they are rebuilding the roadway, but it was supposed to start in October and not finish until April or so next year. I didn't check the bottom slide area. I parked along Altadena, as usual, and proceeded down and over the wash area to the start of the horse trail to the road. The horse trail has a little bit of shade, especially at the bottom, which was nice when starting a little after 3PM with the temperature somewhere a smidgen below 90F. It looks like some repairs have been completed, though. There was no need to snake about the fallen debris near the top of the hike on this go. The roadway was all a smooth and easy hike. I got to the top with about half an hour to sunset. Since I've already done a sunset picture during a previous hike , I opted to sketch the transplanted fire watch tower ins...

Angeles National Forest Locate the trailhead. The old way to Henninger Flats is to start at the bottom of the Mt. Wilson Toll Road and walk up. The road has a gate on it that is only open sunrise to sunset but now hasn't been open for years because a large section of the road, visible from the gate, has been removed by a landslide. With the traffic of people who go up the mountain from around here, it might be expected to have a good trail bed again, but it does not. Since the gate never opens, one must start in at some other location or trespass. If the sunrise to sunset time limit is no problem, then the Eaton Canyon lot is a good starting spot. If not, between the two is a small dirt lot along Altadena Dr. Either way, the reason there hasn't been a good trail bed made by the passage of people is because there's another way up using the Eaton Canyon trail directly across the riverbed. From the lot on Altadena, one may have to go east a little to get to it. ...