Clear Lake - October 2021

It's October 4.  The goal for this trip:  Sit for days by a lake, under the shade of tall trees, to catch a late summer/fall escape.  So, we head for Clear Lake.  A real camping trip.  We get to put out the tablecloth on the picnic table and set our chairs on the mat.  No fires allowed, but we have a stove to cook on and a lake and clear sky to stare at, so we will forego the campfire on this trip.  

This is a trip where we get to stop and visit all the local places that we have wanted to visit for years but never got there.  How rich!

Our first stop northward was at the petrified forest, off Mark West Springs Road.  What a delightful little park! 

There was a delightful path, less than a mile long, that takes you through the park. The interpretative signs along the way were great!  I never knew that Mt. Helena was volcanic! 

 The silica from the volcanic ash was the main ingredient for the wood becoming petrified.

The gift shop was pretty nice too!  Beautiful rocks and fossiles.

Onward, past Cobb Mountain, we head into the hills of Lake County.  There are still so many burned areas on our trek.  What is somewhat apparent is that, usually in the years after a forest fire, the flora is transformed in stages, with grasses, then shrubs, as the trees that survived start sprouting new starts.  But because it has been so very dry, these stages have been arrested, it seems.  It has been years for some of these burn areas, and the areas still look very scorched, with little shrub growth filling in.  It is sobering, as we make our climb over the ridge, heading into the Clear Lake watershed.

 We cross into the watershed and head downhill, and then into Kelseyville.  We stopped for a bottle of wine, and then headed back to our turn, and were waved to the side of the road by Daniel, a local traveler, missing his front two teeth.  Seems he just wanted to greet  people as they came into town.  He warned us that the raccoons in the area knew how to open zippers, so beware if we were camping.  We thanked him, and then went on our way.

And, alas we pull into the Clear Lake State Park, and find our spot #63.  It is right on the lake.  Just what the doctor ordered!

Time to begin our lakeside r&r!

Porthos is anxious because he senses the raccoons looming, waiting for us to go inside so they can clean up our campsite. We tidy up so they don't score a bag of cookies at our site.

Next day, we do absolutely nothing! Walking down to the lake shore was a mere 50 ft trek, so we walked it many times, just to go watch birds skimming the water's surface. Loons, geese, and others, it was a busy waterway for the day and well into the night. And on land, the biggest crows and lots of rapters floating and squawking overhead. This is a bird haven, and it is marvelous.

We muster ourselves up for a walk around the park, and head out along the shoreline going eastward. There is an established swimming beach in the park.

 We check out neighboring campsite loops, and mark a few spots where we might venture to stay next time. The upper loop was closed for the season, but the campsites sit high above the lake with beautiful vistas.

Back at our campsite, we enjoy the color display of the setting sun, and the show of birds settling in for the evening.

Next morning, we have breakfast and are all revved up to hike Mt. Konocti. We turn on the ignition, and......nothing happens. It didn't seem to be a battery issue, but our neighbor Chris helped us with a jump-start, which solved the immediate issue.

 But, now hiking all day didn't seem like a good idea with an iffy battery, so we headed to Napa Parts in Kelseyville to test our battery and buy a new one if needed.

Well, the battery tested okay, so now it's an ignition problem? We couldn't figure how a jump helped if it wasn't a battery issue, but go figure. While mulling it over with the Napa Parts crew, a customer, George joined the conversation and said he was a wizard at mechanics, he'd have a look for us.  What a hoot!! He helped us diagnose, or at least learn about all the checkpoints on the electrical system, all while learning about his motorcycle accident, his hole in his skull and deaf ear, his complete auto mechanics shop of tools in the hatch-back of his Peugeot, particularly his 10mm wrenchs that always disappear, so he carries 2 just in case ('cause that size fits everything). And, lo and behold, he wiggled something, and the problem went away. We asked what it was, and he said," oh, maybe some dirt came off on a wire i touched, maybe you didn't tap the brake pedal gently enough, maybe your car didn't think it was in "park", I donno." Lol! So Phil took him inside and bought all the items George had initially planned to buy in the shop for him, and we headed out for a long drive around the lake, to super-charge the battery, and to practice our new ritual for starting the engine. Clap our hands three times, lightly touch the brake, and gingerly turn on the ignition. When turning it off, delicately move the shift into Park and make sure the P is lit up before turning off the key. I hope this gets us all the way home!

Driving around Clear Lake, the north side feels a little like a place that society forgot.  There are little trailer parks and old little houses scattered around the north shore, and people just sort-of hanging out, watching the clouds go by.  Not really any place to pull in for a meal, or point of interest, that was open anyway.  Also, the lake level was very low, which added a certain eeriness to the hamlets lining the lake.  All of the private houses had their own docks attached to the back porches, that now stuck up looking like fire lookout platforms rather than boat docks.  Something was in low supply in the area:  with water levels low, the economy was also slumping a bit. Nowhere to launch a boat, concern for high algae counts in the lake due to the concentration and higher temperature of the water body.....people just weren't heading to the lake right now.

 

     We continued our lake loop through Lower Lake, into the older part of town.  There was an Hispanic community that was prevalent, so we went into one grocery store looking for Herdez salsa (but alas, no luck, they didn't have this brand).  We then found a wonderful, relatively new park in town right by the water, and got out of the van for a little stretch.  It had a cool gym section of the park which I've never seen outdoors before, where they had weight machines and parcourse exercise machines for older kids to use.  Cool!  Like an outdoor gym, it was pretty nice.  There were a bunch of teen boys there, working out and proably just having fun hanging out late on a school day.

 Being that we now had an iffy problem to solve with our rv iginition, we decided shorten our trip to have our ignition checked out, and to get a new battery.  So, we headed out in the morning.

Just outside the state park, we pulled into Peace & Plenty Farm.  They were decorating the shop for harvest season, and we went inside.

  At this time of year, the produce was limited to squashes, the last of the tomatoes and garlic, but they had a number of prepared items in jars like honey and pesto also.  And, they had a little specialty of producing saffron.  We purchased a bottle of saffron extract, and also a dozen corms to grow our own.  This was quite educational; I did not know that saffron was in the crocus family.  We got full instructions on how to plant, harvest, and maintain our saffron garden. We are excited.

We took an alternate route home, heading through Lower Lake, and came across a little barbeque place right on the main intersection in town.  Wow, and it's lunch time!  Perfect!

This has to be one of the tastiest barbeque hamburgers i ever had.. Phil got the quarter-rack. We ate at their covered tables outside. Porthos sat under the table, hoping that we would drop maybe a little nibble for him.  Sorry Porthos, this is humans' food only.

Heading through the Pope Valley, into Napa county was gorgeous.  As we headed south through Napa county, the terrain transitioned from open country roads to more manicured properties, still rural of course, but you could tell we were moving into another environment, another demographic.

Fancy wineries started popping up , wrapped with white picket fences as we emerged from the Pope Valley and joined the Silverado Trail.  All the superstar wineries live here, it's like Hollywood/Beverly Hills of the wine clans. Being not very anxious to stop, we continue homeward, but enjoy the beauty of these golden hills wrapped with vinyards and white fences.

10/24/21  After a clean bill of health with our ignition system and a new chassis battery, we head back to Clear Lake to continue our trip.  Of course, we have to take an alternate route northward, so we headed on highway 80 to Vacaville, took highway 505 north to the Berryessa exit at Winters.  Winters, what a quaint little town!  We drove through Main Street, enjoying the little shops within the 4-block downtown area, and then marveled at the victorian houses and bungalows on the west side of town.  This is one town where we're going to stop and spend some time!

Onward to Lake Berryessa, we made our way north on the west shore, taking in the views of the rolling hills which turned to sharper and steeper slopes as we made our way northward.  The entire area surrounding Lake Berryessa was burn-scorched from about two years ago.  Black skeletal tree sticks rising from lower green brush and brown grass and occasional leafy outgrowth.  It is as if the pheonix is still at rest, awaiting the return of its full form from the ashes.

We make our way northward to Putah Creek campground.  Along the way, all the day-use spots are completely empty.  It is Tuesday after all, at the end of October, so yeah, that makes sense.  And, the water level is too low to launch a boat, so that with the surrounding hills being burned out, I guess this is not really the place where people flock to on a Tuesday.  Lucky for us, we are basking in the space and silence, taking in this extraordinary place in its extreme state, beautiful and at rest.

Putah Creek Campground is run by the Royal Elk Park Management company, so it is actually a privately-managed site.  We check in with the hosts, who are the only other campers in the entire establishment today.  We have the pick of the place for camp spots, so we meander out to a stretch, just south of the boat launch peninsula.  From there, we can see the major lake body of the lake to the left, and a minor inlet to the right.  

 I am enamoured with the inlet.  The water level is very low, but the newly-exposed mud has stripes of colors, apparently from ground-cover flora that settled in during the summer.  There is a small boat dock with its slips currently empty in this inlet.  These are small slips, most likely for a fleet of self-propelled paddle boats, or rowboats.  We noticed at night, the dock lit up with low-wattage solar lamps, guiding the steps along the dock and each slip.  The area was quite beautiful in daylight and nightfall.

In the morning we walked out to the boat launch, just to see where the action would be if the lake level wasn't so low.  The ramp was closed; there was no way anyone backing a trailer into the water would be able to launch a boat.  The water's edge was just about 3 inches away from where the concrete ramp ended.  Nobody in their right mind would want to try to launch their boat here.  Glad they closed the launch, because I'm sure there are people who would try if it was open.

Porthos and I walked out to the end of a floating dock that they placed at the very end of the boat ramp.  Porthos doesn't  care for floating sidewalks, so we didn't hang out for too long.  But I did get a cardio workout getting back up the ramp.  This was the longest boat ramp I have ever seen.

We climb into our ride and head down the Berryessa-Knoxville Road, over toward Knoxville (a dot on the map), which guides us to Lower Lake and Clear Lake just beyond.  The camp hosts say that this road is open and passable, just watch for a few rocks in the road.   It's a 10-mile stretch to Knowxville, so okay, we're game.  Right past the northern tip of Lake Berryessa, the road sign warns us of rough road ahead, and it narrows into nearly a one-lane road.  Okay, we're still game.  The scenery is beautiful, and obviously this is the road less traveled.

Driving this stretch of road started feeling like a video game where we'd lose a percent of our life line every time we hit a pothole.  Steering was constant, meandering all over the road to avoid falling into these holes that could have been bottomless pits, for all we knew.  We had just had a rainstorm three days ago where 6 inches of rain fell, and it was obvious by the debris and rocks still scattered on the road, that nobody had been through to check on the safety or condition of this stretch.  We crossed six streambeds, all lined with concrete beds for the roadway to cross, but it is ominous to pass through inches of water on a main throughway!  And, as the road made its way up in elevation, we twisted and turned with it, often in places where a few feet of the road bed had apparently just broken of and slipped down the hill on the right.  I am glad I was driving, because that put me on the left, further from the edge!  Thank you Phil for your patience!  Rough Road, that was an understatement.  Finally, we reached Knoxville, which turned out to be a OHV site and an active mining area, not a coffee shop or bar in sight (we would have taken either at this point).  But just a mile past Knoxville, the roadway widened and thankfully the familiar double-yellow line appeared in the middle of the road.  We were back on maintained turf!  Phew!

Onward to Lower Lake, and we timed it perfectly because it was lunch time, and so we pulled into that fabulous barbeque place we found last time. It's called, "Danny's Roadside Kitchen". I had a burger with glazed onions, bacon, and mushrooms, hold the bun!  Phil got his favorite, the 1/4 rack of ribs.  Fabulous!  If you're traveling through, you might call ahead 'cause it takes 20 minutes for them to cook your order, but it's worth waiting for! It is take-out-only, but they have lovely picnic tables around the back. And, they take cash only (nice of them to have an atm just inside the door).

 And, we stop at the Lower Lake Jailhouse, an historical marker!

We also stop at a smoke shop two doors down from the jail, just to see what gadgets and things are selling these days. There were glass pipes, oil flasks shaped like the most gorgeous perfume bottles, and who knows what else.  While we're here, it seems befitting that we pick up a lottery ticket as well. 

We then head up to Clear Lake State Park, and sure enough, our favorite spot is available (site 63).  Home sweet home.  

There is a sand bar that is formed just off the shore from our site, and it's full of pelicans.  

I held my camera up to our binoculars to see if I could get a good close-up shot.  Not bad.

The next morning, there was a dense fog over both land and water.  There were a few brave souls out fishing.

The fog started lifting around 11am, so we decided to climb Mt. Konocti.  Well, we thought at least, we'd head up the hill, and just see how far we got.  That goal was a little less intimidating.  The mountain stood at a grand 4300 ft, anad from the trailhead it was a 6-mile round-trip hike.  I was sure we could get to the top, but was a little nervous about the descent, with tempermental knees.

We drove up to the trailhead and parked.  There were only two other cars parked at the trailhead, so it looks like we nearly have the mountain to ourselves!  Off we go.

About a half mile in, we let Porthos off leash.  He enjoyed his freedom, but stayed close to us the entire time, and was very attentive to responding to our command.  Yahoo!  

We made it to the first rest stop, where there was a big gravel platform built.  We saw more of these along the trail; not exactly sure it was for tents, so we're trying to figure these out.

Along the route, we passed through a lovely oak forest.

Continuing onward, we made it to the next two rest stops, and thought, let's go for the summit!  And, Yay! We made it!

The views from the top were spectacular!  With the recent rain, the atmosphere was clear and we got 100-mile views in every direction.

 So glad we still got it in us to hike up tall hills!  We'll just keep doing this as long as we can.

Too bad there was no docent at the top; the park pamphlet said that they would take us up the fire lookout if they were there.

Now, for the harder part of the hike; the descent.  It was a piece of cake for about 2 miles, then my left knee started acting up.  Glad I had a walking stick this time.  It came in very handy, as I was limping back to the car!  Ouch!  The nice part about the hike was that when we got back to the rv, all our comfort items were there waiting for us; a bottle of Aleve, fresh water on tap, flip flops, and even a couch to stretch out on and rest before we started the engine.

 Back to the state park, through Kelseyville, and to a lovely evening, celebrating our "bagging a peak".  Later in the evening as I was walking Porthos along the lake shore, I came across a beautiful plant that was covered with dew drops.  I don't think the photo does it justice; it looked magical and bejeweled.

Next day, we leisurely got up and made breakfast.  Today we head west, to Calpella, where we'll be staying as a Harvest Host guest at Testa Winery.

Along the way, we stop by Mendocino Lake.  We pulled in the parking lot near the boat ramp that was closed for obvious reasons.

I recall Phil and I met Mark Irwin here 30 years ago, and we sailed around the lake with Phil's hobie cat.  I distinctly recall being on the lake where I was equal distance between the far trees and the boat launch.  That would have put me about where the yellowish grass color is.  This lake is practically gone.  We know we're low on water in California, but to see the entire Lake Mendocino reduced to just a few acres of water is nothing less than shocking.

Just incredible.  As beautiful as this meadow is to look at, it is supposed to be filled with water.

Onward, we pull into Calpella, and find Testa Winery.  What a lovely setting, and a nice story of the Testa family that built the vinyard and winery.

We were offered a tasting, and purchased a lovely white (sauv blanc and chardonnay blend) and their "black" label (Cab, zin, petite sirah, a little merlot, and I think a touch of all their other red grapes they grow).  I wondered if my pallette has gotten softer in my "old age";  the red blend suited me better than the varietals, and what's this, picking a white wine?  Sometimes you just gotta follow your instinct!

After the tasting room closed, we settled the rv for the night, and took a walk around the vinyard.  The ground was still soft from the recent rain, but just dry enough that we didn't sink into the mud with our steps.

And, back to the rv for the evening, watching the setting sun.