Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

The weather forecast as of a few days ago was a picture of beautiful weather on tap. It'd be warm (for the season) and sunny. To read my blog earlier today grumbling about the weather and then see a forecast like this...



...With a week and a half of high temperatures in the 60s, you might say, you might say, "Quit yer bitchin'!"

Unfortunately the reality has been far different from this forecast. Each day we've started off with dark, gloomy mornings followed by afternoons with temperatures that have fallen several degrees short of these mythical 60+° numbers. Today, for example, it was just 50° outside when I drove around town at 11:30am. It probably won't get warmer than 53° today.

Thanksgiving triplog #19
South of Harrisburg PA · Sun, 29 Nov 2025. 8:20am.

Today's the day we run the gantlet of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles to head home from Pennsylvania after Thanksgiving... and it's snowing! I'd seen precipitation in today's weather forecast a few days ago. I figured it would come as rain as the temperatures were too warm for snow. But evidently it's a bit cooler than the forecast as I woke up to this sight.



Well, this isn't what it looked like when I woke up. This photo is from just before we left my inlaw's house at 8am. I think the snow only started at about 7am since I watched it accumulate outside the window as I sat down to eat breakfast.

Will this snow interfere with our travel today? I hope not. I figure, one, we're leaving early enough in the morning that won't encounter much holiday traffic. Two, I figure this snow will quickly turn to rain as we drive south. Indeed, traffic maps show that the drive to BWI airport is still expected to take just 90 minutes. And three, the airport is far enough south that it would be out of this band of snow.



South of Harrisburg it's still snowing. It's freaky how big the snowflakes are. I think that's a consequence of the temperature being just near freezing. It's only about 34° F (1° C) outside. Snow is just barely sticking to the grass and the margins of the road. In the traffic lanes it's melting immediately. Still, it's good we've left early when traffic is light. If we had to contend with holiday traffic in this weather it could quickly turn into a mess.

Update: The snow tapered off by the time we reach York, as I expected, but then it came back as a mix of snow and freezing rain as we crossed into Maryland. Thankfully it's just rain at BWI airport. Our inbound aircraft is coming from Florida and is tracking on time, and weather to the west (where we'll fly) looks fairly clear.

Wow, it's been 5 days since I've posted to my blog. That's really dropping the cadence since I set a goal years ago to post something every day. Missing one day here or there... yeah, that happens maybe a handful of times a year. Missing two days in a row... until this week that's only happened once this year. Missing three days in a row... not since 2021. And here I've missed four in a row.

Why did I drop the pace? Partly it's the downhill slide that happens when you skip once. Skip once, and it becomes easier to skip the next day, too. By the third or fourth day I barely even thought about the fact I was skipping it.

So, what's happened in the past 5 days? For one, the weather's changed. I've remarked before that I know it's fall season when it's cool enough that I choose to wear pants for warmth rather than for decorum or fashion purposes. I've worn pants the past several days and will again today.

Pants aren't the only sign it's fall, though. I've remarked before they're one of three indicators. The other two are it's starting to rain (a northern California climate thing) and it's gotten cool enough to run the heat in the house. Well, it rained a few weeks ago. Rain hasn't yet become a steady thing... though maybe it will soon, with rain in the forecast the next few days. And running the heat? Though it has been cool overnight & in the mornings the past few weeks we haven't yet switched on the heat. But again, the weather in the forecast the next few days may change that.

So, what's up other than the change of seasons? Well, I was busy at work the back half of the week. That's part of why I slipped my blogging cadence. The busy-ness was unexpected.... Early in the week my calendar was only half full, but then new things kept popping up. Even on Friday. At 8am Friday I had 2 hours meetings/tasks scheduled. By COB Friday I'd been booked nearly solid.

And outside of work? Ugh, work has left me drained most days. I've slumped into a pattern of finishing work for the day, rustling up some dinner, and then crashing at home the rest of the evening, often going to bed around 9:30pm. But Saturday Hawk and I got out & did a thing. We wen to the open house at the California Raptor Center in Davis. I have a bunch of pictures and video of the birds of prey we saw there. I'll share those soon.

And on tap for today? Ugh, even just a road trip yesterday left me tired out— as did our road trip to the Sheep Fair last weekend— so today's going to be a relax-at-home day. I figure I'll go for a soak in the hot tub in a bit, then get lunch, then... probably just fritter the day away. But I hope it will be a good fritter. Maybe I'll even find time & energy to blog more.

Technically Fall started two days ago, on September 22 here in the Northern Hemisphere. That's the astronomical season, though, based on the autumnal equinox. Some people like using a simplified seasonal calendar that says Fall is the months of September, October, and November. I like thinking of the season based on everyday observations including the weather's impact, such as when it's cool enough to wear trousers or turn on the heater. Well, I haven't yet worn trousers or turned on the heat— in fact I've literally got the A/C running as I write this— but the third element of the trifecta dropped today, abruptly. It rained.

Yes, Fall fell a few days late here, and it dropped with a clunk. Yesterday, when we coincidentally returned home from Phoenix where it was 100°, it was 96° here. I think that was actually the hottest day this year! Today it's almost 20 degrees cooler and it rains.

Is Fall weather here to stay? I'd say signs are mixed. Today's rain, though it lasted only about an hour, does not seem like a fluke. There's rain in the forecast Mon-Tue-Wed next week. But first it'll be pleasantly warm again, with highs in the low 80s— i.e., summer weather— the next few days.

Canada travelog #27
Back at the hotel · Thu, 28 Aug 2025. 4pm.

Today we visited one waterfalls, Felker's Falls. Well, we tried to visit others, but they were dry. Even though it's been raining today. Yeah, this is like the worst combination of conditions for waterfall hikes: the waterfalls are dry while we get soaked. 👎

Felker's Falls is in a city park in Hamilton. It's such a low key area. It's behind a children's playground in a suburban neighborhood. We parked by the trashcans, walked past the jungle gym, and to the hiking trails at the back.

"Are we in the right place?" we wondered. Then we saw fences everywhere and knew we were. 🤣



We followed once fenced path a short distance around the falls where the view was poor then doubled back to hike another fenced path on the other side.

We briefly entertained the question Can we hike to the bottom? It would be too steep going down the side of the canyon from above. The maps and a description on AllTrails imply we could partly hike an established trail, partly rock-hop up the creek from the bottom; but the weather was darkening and these falls just weren't big enough to be worth it. We decided to content ourselves with this view.



It's good we decided to be content here, because on our (short) walk back to the car it started to rain. And I don't just mean a drizzle or misty rain. We were dressed for that. No, it started to pour. We got to the car, hung our rain jackets to dry over our seat backs, and drove on to the next location.

I don't even remember now what the name of the next falls we visited was. It was out past Devil's Punchbowl— or, as I've been calling it since visiting there on Monday, Devil's Dustbowl. It was dry. We decided to pack it in for the day, ate lunch down the hill in town, then drove back out to the hotel.

Now we're back at the hotel. We figure we'll chill here for the rest of the day. We've kind of run out of things to do since dry balls cut short our list of activities. We're petered out at this point.

At least there's one more falls we can visit tomorrow before we go home, when the weather should be better again. Hawk put that falls near the bottom of the list because it charges a hefty entrance fee and has a reservation system. But we're scraping bottom here, so it's what's left on the list.

Canada travelog #12
Dundas, ON · Mon, 25 Aug 2025. 2pm.

It disappoints me when I start a hike, the weather's nice, then it turns sour by the time I get to the payoff vista. That's what happened when I hiked Webster Falls this morning— it got gloomy and rainy. It burns me even more when I deal with poor weather while I'm on the hike, decide to leave, then the weather gets better after I've gone. That's what happened while I was over at Tew Falls— the sun came out. Most of the time stuff like this happens there's nothing to do but accept it. Today, because the hikes were short and close together, I said I'm going back. And that's what I've done. I went back to Webster Falls.



I parked in the lot a second time, paying nothing extra thanks to the good-at-all-local-parks-for-the-day $22.50 toll I already paid. And I walked to the falls on the short trail. And I climbed around the fence and scrambled down to the perch where I could actually see the falls, because fuck this town and its put-a-fence-around-everything-even-slightly-dangerous risk aversion.



I sat there on my perch for a while, making motion-blue pictures with my fancy camera (first frame above) and even a quick video with my iPhone (second frame). This time I even had the place to myself (plus Hawk). It's like the rain earlier in the hour chased off the riffraff. 😅

Today (Saturday) has been a taking-it-easy day for me.

Taking it easy started last night actually, when after feeling pooped out from long days and short nights of travel earlier in the week I fell asleep around 8pm. I slept through until almost 8am this morning. Sleeping 12 hours might seem to stretch past "decadent" and into "are you sure you're not sick?" territory, but when I consider that across the four previous nights I averaged just 6 hours/night of sleep it seems not outrageous.

After waking up this morning I puttered around the house until after 11. The time snuck up on me. Around 11:30 I asked Hawk when a friend of ours, David, would be coming over; he hadn't reached out to us yet today. She texted him and found he was already on the train, and was just 20 minutes away. Ooookay then, time for a couple of quick showers! We met him just before noon and went out to lunch together.

After lunch we came back to our place. Our plan had been to spend the afternoon by the pool, but even by 1pm today the morning cloud layer was still hanging over the area. This is part of the still-ongoing mostly-cooler-than-normal spring and summer we've been having. Instead of decamping to the pool we swept the patio and sat there. Eventually the sky cleared and the air warmed a bit. By then we were happily enjoying the patio— more enjoyable now that it had been swept! We skipped the pool.

Once again time crept up on me. Suddenly it was 6pm! Time to start talking dinner. Hawk bowed out due to aches, leaving David and me to pick a place nearby. We aligned on Oren's Hummus in Mountain View. The food there was good, as always, though the restaurant was surprisingly almost empty— surprisingly because neighboring restaurants were packed indoors and out.

After a good dinner David got on the train to head north, back home. I walked him to the station then walked back to my car with a take-out container Hawk had requested. By 8pm I was back home... and not feel like doing much else for the day.

North Coast Roadtrip travelog #8
Shelter Cove · Sun, 27 Jul 2025, 11:30am

Sunday morning after visiting the Black Sand Beach(es) just north of where we stayed for the night on the Lost Coast we drove back past the inn to the small marina on the south end of town at Shelter Cove.



The first thing you notice at Shelter Cove, after driving past an airstrip— I guess flying is an easier way to get here than driving the steep mountain roads— and a shockingly packed "campground" that is just a parking lot full of RVs and trailers parked next to each other, is a lighthouse. And it's a short light house. Like, the lamp in it (which has been removed) wouldn't have been much higher than about 22' (6.5 meters) above the ground. Why not a tall lighthouse like the classic ones seen all over the Atlantic coast and even around the Great Lakes?

The answer is explained in a historical marker outside the lighthouse. This lighthouse wasn't originally located here, on this flat field atop a low cliff. It was originally built for Cape Mendocino 30 miles north, where it sat atop a cliff 400' above the ocean. It didn't need to be tall since it was already high. Its light could be seen 28 miles out at sea.

The lighthouse went into operation at Cape Mendocino in 1868. It served for over 100 years before the Coast Guard decommissioned it due to its clifftop perch become unstable and becoming too expensive to maintain. The lighthouse was moved here and restored in the 1990s by a nonprofit group.



While we were at the cove we also climbed down the stairs to beach to see the cove. There are rocky shallows here where the innkeeper this morning boasted that, if our timing was right, we'd see all five kinds of starfish in the tide pools. Five kinds of starfish? WTF, they come in 4-, 6-, 8- and 10-armed varieties in addition to the standard 5 shape? 😂

Well, it was a bad day for starfish as we saw exactly zero of them in the tide pools. These were frankly very lame tide pools, just stinky water and weeds. It's nothing like the tide pools at Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego. And the grim weather here is nothing like that beautiful sunny day in February we enjoyed in San Diego.

Of course, it is a sunny day here. It's sunny above the fog layer. As one of my high school guidance counselors years ago loved to say on rainy/cloudy days, The sun is shining, you just can't see it! 😎

It's been odd reading in the news about heat waves gripping the US as here in California it's been a cool summer. It's more than just a "This week it's cool out" phenomenon, though. It's been cooler than normal the past few months here in coastal California. I already knew that from my own gut sense (I notice the weather every day though I don't record it rigorously) but it was interesting to see it confirmed, and explained, in articles I read today when I looked up why it's such a thing that California is cooler than the rest of the US.

First, here's a picture of what I'm talking about:



This is a chart from a week ago. It shows that over a near-term forecast range (6-10 days) coastal California will have lower than average temperatures while much of the rest of the US is above normal.

As a specific example of what "Below" normal means, high temps the past few days around my home have averaged 76° F. That's 5° below the local average for this time of year. That's where my gut sense of it being cool comes from. A difference of a degree or two, I wouldn't notice. But a 5 degree difference, especially persistently, I do notice. And occasionally grouse about here in my blog because I look forward to enjoying summer-y summer weather!

As far as why there's this temperature discrepancy across the US, worsening summer heat waves are part of what's happening with global climate change. What's happening in California is an older, not-man-made pattern. A strong ocean current brings cold water from the Gulf of Alaska down to the Pacific coast of northern California. High pressure zones have been causing us to get winds from across the ocean. The wind cools over the cold water and acts like a natural air conditioner for coastal California. At some point the high pressure nexus will shift and winds will blow offshore.... Then we'll get heated air from the east blowing over us instead of cool ocean air. But for now the high pressure pattern is sticking in "A/C is ON" position.

A Cool Summer in Parts of California Doesn't "Disprove" Climate Change

It's sad I have to point this out, but I do. Beause there are climate idiots (not just skeptics but fools) out there who sneer when there's a cold week, "So much for ‘‘Global Warming’’!"

The existence of this cooling pattern in California does not contradict the existence or impact of human-caused Global Warming. As a recent blog on Weather West argues, 100 years ago this cool summer weather wouldn't have been unusual in California. The significant global warming of the last 50 years ago puts it at contrast with the new normal. And yes, there always will be "cold snaps" even in a world of global warming. There will always be winter blizzards, too, in Minneapolis and Buffalo. Global Warming is about the averages shifting in significant ways. Summers, in general, are getting more intense, and days of sub-zero winter weather in the snow belt are getting fewer.

Oregon Cascades Travelog #15
Bend, OR - Thu, 3 Jul 2025, 8:30pm

We're back from another fun day of vacation in the Oregon Cascades. Though today we weren't really in the Oregon Cascades.... Instead we headed east from Bend into the high desert volcanic scrub land. Along the way we explored mountains of glass, hiked a volcanic fissure in the ground... oh, and saw about 100 hawks.

We saw the first few dozen hawks as we were driving east on US 20 out of Bend toward Glass Butte. The hawks were perched on power line poles along the side of the highway. At first we didn't see any raptors. Then we saw one or two. "Huh, I'm surprised there's food out here for them," I thought to myself. The we started seeing them every half mile. There must be plenty of food for them! I've only seen this density of birds of prey in the wild twice before.

We arrived in the area of the Glass Buttes and turned off the highway. From there we'd see only dirt and gravel roads for the next few hours. Yay, choosing to drive our own car (4x4 SUV) instead of flying and renting a car! We drove around to sites specifically where Hawk could rock-hound for different varieties of obsidian. She filled a canvas tote bag.

After rock-hounding and eating a trail lunch in the car we drove back out to the highway and backtracked a bit to the west before leaving the highway again to traverse gravel and dirt roads for most of the next 50 miles to get to Crack-in-the-Ground, an interesting volcanic fissure. From there we parked the car at the trail head, strapped on our packs, and hiked over 2 miles, much of it in narrow a chasm up to 70 feet deep. As with yesterday's summary I'm skipping over sharing photos (and video!) for now to keep from falling too far behind in writing about this trip.

Oh, and we at least a dozen more hawks on the drive to Crack-in-the-Ground. Plus another dozen more as we drove to the remote little town of Christmas Valley afterwards for a light dinner. Yes, it was already after 6pm! Then there were lots more hawks as we drove west toward Fort Rock and Hole in the Ground.

Yes, there's a Hole in the Ground in addition to Crack-in-the-Ground. We didn't get to see the hole, though, because it was raining by the time we got there. It was raining— pouring, really, with occasional lightning in the sky— as we passed by Fort Rock, as well. These both would've been fun to see. Alas, maybe on a return trip to Bend a few years from now!

Update, 11pm: the rain and lightning hit us in Bend later in the evening, spoiling yet another part of our plans for the day. Having gotten back to our hotel around 8:30pm we looked forward to soaking in the hot tub before it closes at 10. Well, at 9:15 or so when we were ready to go, WHOOSH! rain started to fall. We thought maybe we'd wait it out but then CRACK! lightning. And the rain lasted for 2 hours. It's a bummer we didn't get to use the hot tub. My sore muscles would've appreciated it.