The Drive to Zim Zim Falls
May. 5th, 2025 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerSunday we made a day trip out to Zim Zim Falls. It's a fairly tall waterfalls in a fairly remote corner of the Bay Area. It's in Napa County, but not the part you think of when you hear "Napa Valley". There are no wineries, tasting rooms, or hot-spring lodges nearby. It 's out in the wilderness.
We rolled out of our garage just before 9:30am, having slept in a bit and then waited to see if we were up for a big day outdoors. It seemed like we were, so we filled water in our packs, stuffed changes of clothes in a sack, and set out for the day.
Getting to Zim Zim always feels like a bit of adventure in and of itself. The past few times I've thought of the road trip as having two parts, but this weekend I've realized it's really three.
Part One is zooming along interstate highways up to Cordelia, California. If you're not a local you might be wondering, "Where?" It's the small town on the edge of the Bay Area where I-680 ends at I-80— or where 680 begins as it forks off from 80, depending on your perspective. For us it's also a typical spot for an early lunch break on this trip. There's a Del Taco here, and eating at Del Taco is one of our guilty pleasures. We only get to do it on road trips, though. This one 73 miles away is practically the closest one to us!
Part Two of the trip is driving country roads up through Solano and Napa Counties. There are wineries back here, unlike what I said in the first paragraph, above. But the wineries are in the southern part of the leg of this trip, in the Suisun Valley geographical area.
Part Three of the drive starts as we turn off of Route 128 onto Berryessa Knoxville Road. In the past I've thought of this as an extension of part 2, but then each time I've gotten frustrated at how long it takes. Sunday I measured it. It's 24 miles. And the last several of those miles are slow— actually slower and slower each year— because the road is in increasingly poor shape as it climbs above Lake Berryessa. Notably the road involves 3 water crossings to get to the trailhead for Zim Zim.
This weekend two were dry and the third had only an inch or so of water flowing across the road bed. But that wasn't the hard part of the drive. No, the part where I was thinking, This is probably the last year we drive here in our sports car convertible, was the crumbling road itself. The potholes are getting worse and worse.
Well, right around 12:30 we got to the trailhead. The drive had taken 3 hours, including our stop for brunch at Del Taco. Time to hike!
We rolled out of our garage just before 9:30am, having slept in a bit and then waited to see if we were up for a big day outdoors. It seemed like we were, so we filled water in our packs, stuffed changes of clothes in a sack, and set out for the day.
Getting to Zim Zim always feels like a bit of adventure in and of itself. The past few times I've thought of the road trip as having two parts, but this weekend I've realized it's really three.
Part One is zooming along interstate highways up to Cordelia, California. If you're not a local you might be wondering, "Where?" It's the small town on the edge of the Bay Area where I-680 ends at I-80— or where 680 begins as it forks off from 80, depending on your perspective. For us it's also a typical spot for an early lunch break on this trip. There's a Del Taco here, and eating at Del Taco is one of our guilty pleasures. We only get to do it on road trips, though. This one 73 miles away is practically the closest one to us!
Part Two of the trip is driving country roads up through Solano and Napa Counties. There are wineries back here, unlike what I said in the first paragraph, above. But the wineries are in the southern part of the leg of this trip, in the Suisun Valley geographical area.
Part Three of the drive starts as we turn off of Route 128 onto Berryessa Knoxville Road. In the past I've thought of this as an extension of part 2, but then each time I've gotten frustrated at how long it takes. Sunday I measured it. It's 24 miles. And the last several of those miles are slow— actually slower and slower each year— because the road is in increasingly poor shape as it climbs above Lake Berryessa. Notably the road involves 3 water crossings to get to the trailhead for Zim Zim.
This weekend two were dry and the third had only an inch or so of water flowing across the road bed. But that wasn't the hard part of the drive. No, the part where I was thinking, This is probably the last year we drive here in our sports car convertible, was the crumbling road itself. The potholes are getting worse and worse.
Well, right around 12:30 we got to the trailhead. The drive had taken 3 hours, including our stop for brunch at Del Taco. Time to hike!
