Napa River Trail

There is a trail that runs right behind my apartment complex, and when the weather is nice or I am in the mood for a little exercise, I head straight to it. It's called "The Napa River Trail" and it was originally planned to run a long length of the Napa River, from the north end here at Trancas (you can pick up the trail off of Trancas near the intersection with Silverado Trail) all the way south to Vallejo. Obviously, that would be a huge undertaking and with the state of the state and local budgets, it hasn't been done. However, bits and pieces of the trail have been made, and one of them is here, running along the riverside for 1.1 miles between Trancas to the north and Lincoln to the south.

If you're ever in the area, or taking a bike ride through Napa, this can be a nice and leisurely little diversion -- despite running right behind homes and apartments, the trail is quite quiet and tranquil, populated by a variety of people seeking such asylum including families, dog-walkers, joggers, and even a few folks who head to the river bank for some leisurely fishing. At the southern end near Lincoln, there is also a complex of time-shares and tiny vacation cottages which can be rented, each their own self-contained unit with little decks, grills, and tables to enjoy a meal right next to the trickling stream (which is usually more like a creek at this part of the river).

Yellow and Gray - Napa Valley Mustard

One thing I look forward to every year around this time of year is the beautiful fields of wild mustard that sprout up all over the vineyards of Napa Valley. Just as the holidays are over and the cold, wet, rainy season is settling in, things seem to be a little drab... not much sunshine, not much warmth, not much livelihood in the valley, and not much festivity, either, with the winter holidays recently ending...

But then these tiny, vibrant yellow buds start to sprout between the leafless brown vines. From the wet winter mud sprouts a field of sunshine, like little constellations of bright yellow stars that suddenly bloom and proliferate, in some areas completely blanketing the ground. It's just a nice sight to see -- life when all seems lifeless, color when everything seems gray. It perks me up every time, and is one of my favorite times to just drive up and down through the valley, looking out the window.

These shots were taken in the vineyards off St. Helena Highway / Highway 29, next to the Whitehall Lane winery (which, by the way, I tasted at once... and to be honest, I think their wines are pretty awful.)

During this mustard season (late winter to early spring), there is also a Napa Valley Mustard Festival. I have never attended any of the events for this festival (some of them, like the opening gala and the grand dinner, are pretty expensive) but I'm thinking this is the year I check it out and see what it's like.

Quadrantid Stargazing at Berryessa

I made it a mission to go out in the dead of the night tonight and go stargazing, so long as the sky was clear. And it was!

Now, Napa Valley itself is pretty good for seeing the night sky... it does get nice and dark here, being pretty much rural and agricultural with small towns (which are few and far between). The biggest, baddest fireball I ever saw streak across the sky was a random occurrence while driving home one night on Silverado Trail.

However, even in the valley there is a little bit of light pollution (from...? Napa? Vallejo? Wineries? I'm not quite sure), so to really get an eyeful of stars, I like to wind my way northeast up to the hills around Lake Berryessa. Lake Berryessa is a large man-made reservoir in Napa County, created by a dam which provides water and hydroelectric power. The lake is also a popular recreation area for boaters, etc.

So... why tonight? Well, right now is smack dab in the throes of one of the best annual meteor showers, the Quadrantids. I did not realize this until recently purchasing a glow-in-the-dark star chart calendar which marks all of the meteor showers on it. This one is less well-known than others like the Leonids, probably because winter weather is not conducive to stargazing.

In fact, this was somewhat true tonight, unbeknownst to me. It was crystal clear in Napa, but after winding up the jagged mountain roads toward Berryessa, there was suddenly long patches of dense fog. Perhaps this was caused by the lake itself, combined with the extra-cold (for these parts) temperatures -- it dropped down to 28 degrees tonight!

When we got to Berryessa itself, we nestled the car into a little parking cove on the side of the road and pointed it toward the Big Dipper (near the source of the meteors) and just watched. It was too cold to get out, but the sky was beautiful and the isolation was pretty serene (I've never seen so few cars on the road around heere -- we saw a total of 5 on the journey there and back). We only saw a handful of shooting stars before the fog started rolling in and obscuring things. So we headed north to come back down the road into Rutherford, and there is a smaller lake there with some parking and there was no fog there. Saw a few more shooting stars, for a total of about a dozen, and then decided it was time to head home.

But the moral of the story is... stargazing is definitely one fun activity to do here on a clear night! Especially if you can wind up the roads off the beaten path a little bit, into the mountains.