I went down to Ojai, but along the 150 which I have not continued along before, and stopped at The Thatcher School where the hike up Horn Canyon starts.  In the shadowed cool, I started in gloves and almost forgot my hat.  It warmed up nicely once out of the shadow, then warmed up slightly too much as I passed into another air layer.  Climbing was ( Read more... )

A bit more rain and maybe Mission Falls will be flowing?  Only one way to find out, and that's to look.  I started up Rattlesnake, since like that loads better than Tunnel, but was determined to see where the use trail just after the first mile went.  I suspected up to the utility road above and it did, with some great views.  At the catway, I ( Read more... )

We went out for a short hike, with choices being bluffs or mountains.  The rains have just finished washing the air and there's none for the day, so mountains seems the obvious choice.  Specifically, this meant Knapp's Castle.  We wandered our way down among the steady stream of people out for the view.  The fellow really knew what to pick for a ( Read more... )

I wanted to do another large watercolor and have rather liked the warm press paper that is my largest.  I got it out and settled down to draw a bit of kelp forest.  First kelp for days, then I claimed some space for fish and filled in the watery blue, then even more kelp.  It took a whole lot longer when I wasn't racing to finish the whole painting ( Read more... )

After a rather cold night with just barely enough to keep myself warm, I packed up the stuff I'd want dayhiking and gathered the rest in one spot in the campground before heading up the trail some more.  There was a lot of frost along the way, some of it had gathered like snow in places.  There wasn't any for me getting up because it was, as I said ( Read more... )

I headed up the upper north fork of Matilija so that I might finish off the trail in an overnight backpacking trip.  It was frosty in the canyon, but dried out a little as I climbed.  At the first climb, I stopped to draw a bit of the canyon downstream and even a bit of the stream visible nearly directly below.


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Checked the tides online and the site told me they were nearly at -2 feet that very moment.  Well, I must go!  And so I did.  Not as many star fish to be found down there as I was expecting, but I found a few.  There were a few birds finding yummy things among the exposed sea grasses.  I walked the whole time I had light, but wanted to do a sketch ( Read more... )

Up not quite with the sun, I packed up and put together breakfast.  The morning wasn't as cold as I'd expected it to be, based on finding ice in a deep hole in a rock that still had a lot of water in it from the last rain.  I took off to the trail head and started along the trail with quite a bit of warm stuff packed away in my pack.  Getting to ( Read more... )

I decided to hike Haddock, but have and easy but early start by camping up on Pine Mountain the night before.  Of course, as I was driving up, I could certainly stop a place or two to look around and I've been wanting to see what is up Potrero John.  The trail is well marked from the road and has few parking spaces that are often occupied, but the ( Read more... )

I was looking for a pumpkin bread recipe and find that they come in two categories: quick bread with plenty of pumpkin in it but are really cake, or risen bread that only have plenty of pumpkin if the recipe makes 3 loaves.  In fact, all the risen breads seem determined to make more than one loaf with just a little pumpkin puree.  I just want to ( Read more... )