I love exploring local rail history and finding relics of the past that are still standing like the Northwestern Pacific Depot in Mill Valley.
The Northwestern Pacific Railroad’s logo still adorns the Mill Valley Depot.
The depot was constructed in 1929 in a mission revival-style. It replaced a previous depot that also served as the terminal for the railroad in Mill Valley. The first train arrived here in 1890. It was also the terminal for the Mt. Tamalpais & Muir Woods Scenic Railway, also known as The Crookedest Railroad in the World because of its 281 curves.
From the depot the three car train would be pushed up the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais. At the summit, after enjoying some of the best views in the Bay Area, passengers would then board a gravity car for the downhill journey back to Mill Valley.
A replica of a gravity car is on display in the plaza in front of the depot. The depot is now a coffee shop and bookstore.
The gravity cat replica with the NWP Depot in the background.
Saturday morning found Grasshopper and I in front of the Our Lady of the Wayside Church in Portola Valley.
Before us is the 1912 chapel designed by Timothy L. Pflueger in a Spanish Mission Revival style. Plflueger is best know as a designer of art deco movie palaces such as the Castro, Alameda, and Paramount Theatres.
The chapel is believed to be the first building that Pflueger designed, and he was just 19 years old.
I immediately understood the language of this building, having sketched all of California’s 21 Spanish missions (and a few Mission Revival buildings like the Burlingame Depot). This chapel is influenced by Mission Dolores in San Francisco. The arches, bell alcoves, tiled roofs, and angled buttresses were like sketching an old friend.
After sketching the chapel and adding watercolor, I looked at the California Historical Landmark plaque. Our Lady of the Wayside Church is Landmark No. 909.
Our next stop is another California Historical Landmark in Portola Valley. In this case: Casa de Tableta, Landmark No. 825.
Now known as the Alpine Inn, this building was a tavern and gambling joint for the Californios on their way to the coast. In was eventually bought by an American where it served as a roadhouse and a saloon. It is one of California’s oldest drinking establishments, having opened in about 1852.
On August 27, 1976, the Alpine Inn made history when a group of scientists from Stanford sent an electronic message from a computer while in the picnic area of the inn to Boston. This message, according to the plaque on the building, marked “the beginning of the Internet Age”.
The beer garden was calling my name, but it wasn’t opened for another hour!
I took a weekday off and enjoyed a Wednesday morning sketch at China Camp State Park in eastern Marin County.
I headed to the old shrimp fishing village and walked down the pier to look for a good sketching perspective.
China Camp from the end of the pier.
It looked like the beach to the southeast looked best. I walked down the beach and found a picnic bench and started my sketch.
A fishing boat with the pier in the background.
Along San Pablo Bay there were many Chinese shrimping camps that fished for glass shrimp in the tidal waters of the bay. The camp at China Camp was founded in the 1880s and at one time contained 500 residents from Canton, China. The shrimp were brought ashore and dried at China Camp and then exported to China.
In the early 1900s, laws were passed limiting the amount of shrimp fishing in the bay, thus reducing the population of China Camp. By 1914 only the Quan family remained and they continued to fish for shrimp.
The Quan family continued to live at China Camp into the new millennium. They built a cafe and rented out boats to sports fishermen. Frank Quan lived in his cabin at China Camp until his death in 2016 at age 90.
The site eventually became a state park in the 1970s and one of the conditions of the site becoming a state park was that Frank Quan was permitted to remain living in the village.
While the Quan family is gone and China Camp village is a ghost of itself, fishing still continues on in San Pablo Bay in the form of the ultimate king fisher: Pandion haliaetus, the osprey.
A few stops up the road from the village is Buckeye Point. Jutting out from the point are pylons of a former pier. On one of these piers is an active osprey nest looking like a long legged bunch of sticks. Amid the bunches of sticks I could see the white head of an osprey.
I’ve been wanting to join my local sketch group, Sunset Sketchers, for a weekend sketch and it was fortuitous that Sunday’s location was San Francisco’s Columbarium.
I have been to the Columbarium many times and I have even sketched it a few times.
It is here that my grandparents and father are interred.
In all, we had about 15 local sketchers show up on a cold Sunday morning. The group consisted of a few architects and designers and artists sprinkled with some sketchers for sketch-sake. I’m not sure which group I fit into.
I found a bench and started to sketch the imposing lines of the 1898 Neo-Classical columbarium. The building is very ornate and I was trying to keep my sketch loose and at the same time take a little Sketcher’s Liberty and simplify or leave out certain complex elements.
I was soon joined by another sketcher and we sketched and talked about gear and materials and future sketching trips. I finished my sketch (featured sketch) and I went into the Columbarium to warm up and visit dad and my grandparents.
We still had some time before we all met up for the “throw down” so I decided I wanted to sketch the exterior from another perspective. I walked down Loraine Court and sketched the entrance with another Sunset Sketcher (our organizer) for perspective. This time I went really loose with no pencil undersketch. The whole quick sketch was done in brush pen and then painted loosely.
My loose brush- pen sketch with a Sunset Sketcher for scale.
At 12:30 we had the “throw down” where all the sketchers laid their sketches down and it was great to see the columbarium through other sketcher’s eyes.
We all talked about our sketches and shared insights into our process. Comments are allowed but only of the positive variety. You aren’t even allowed to talk trash about your own work!
I have spent a lot of time in Nevada County visiting my mother in Penn Valley. I love to explore this deeply historical part of the Gold Country and there seems there is alway something new to visit and sketch.
And so it was that I found myself on a chilly but sunny morning on the first day of my Spring Break, sketching a statue of a draft horse at the Nevada County Fairgrounds in Grass Valley.
The massive statue is called The Gentle Giant by Todd Andrews and represents a draft horse hitched to three logs. The statue is highly kinetic for a static statue. The horse is straining to pull the logs, perhaps uphill. I hoped I was able to capture some of this energy in my sketch (certainly my spelling had much to be desired).
Sketching at the County Fair. Turns out I was a day late! Darn.
On another morning I headed out to sketch a piece of narrow gauge rail equipment that had recently been put on display near the Sacramento Street exit from Highway 49 in Nevada City. This is a wedge snowplow from a narrow gauge logging railroad. It found it’s way to Yosemite Mountain & Sugar Pine Railroad in Fish Camp. It was burning in a fire on August 30, 2017 where it’s wooden parts were destroyed. It was donated to the Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum in Nevada City were is was restored and put on static display on the site of the former Nevada City narrow gauge depot.
An endangered plover that is rarely seen on the west coast was being seen at the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern San Mateo County.
Grasshopper Sparrow had seen the piping plover a week before and this Saturday morning was my first opportunity to add a rare Bay Area lifer to my list so I picked up Grasshopper a 7:30 and headed to the ponds east of the vast Meta headquarters.
After a circuitous route around the entrance to the Dumbarton Bridge, we found the muddy parking lot and the trailhead that led to the Ravenswood Ponds.
There were already two cars in the parking lot, the more eyes the better! Within about a five minute ramble we came upon the pond where Charadrius melodus had been seen. Two birders already had scopes focused on the sandbars in the middle of the pond. They had not seen the piping, yet.
We scanned the ponds for about three hours (finding a pale plover amongst hundreds takes time and patience). In that time more eyes with scopes began to arrive.
At times the flock, consisting of western and least sandpipers, dunlin, and semipalmated plovers, would land near the watchers on the mudflats. We would quickly scan the birds for a sandy pale plover with orangish legs that was loosely associating with the semipalms, before the flock would erupt in flight.
Watching the shorebirds fly as one, with flashes of white as the birds twisted and turned as one was an absolute joy!
But the pale stubby-nosed, orange-legged plover was proving to be elusive. It seemed that I had tried to turn every semipalmated plover in my scope-view into a piping, with no luck.
Yup, a rare plover brings the birders out on a clear Saturday morning.
As we were nearing our third hour of Plover Watch 2024, a birder to our left called out, “I got the bird!”
What followed was a play by play of the piping’s location and movement; “Do you see the five wigeon in the far channel? Just to the right below the two pylons? The plover is moving to the right. Passing near the green shrubbery. Now it’s facing us, right near the two ruddy ducks now. It’s now going left just past the two semipalms.”
I was following the plover commentary with my scope, looking for the five wigeon and the shrubbery and the ruddy ducks when I finally came upon a pale plover with a pale broken breast-band.
The list of the happiest countries in the world for 2024 has been released.
In the top ten, half of the happiest countries are from Scandinavia (in order): Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and Norway. Yes the Vikings are happy!
I have been to one of these countries, Iceland, but will visit Denmark, Norway, and Sweden this summer.
Could I really tell that Iceland was the third happiest country in the world on my visit? No not really. Icelandic people were polite and good natured but they weren’t exactly widely smiling while dancing in the cobbled streets. There was something deeper than one could glean from a two week visit.
Why Scandinavia? Universal healthcare, paid university, low crime rates, strong national identity, and faith and trust of government, and well designed furniture. Overall these Scandinavian countries look after their people.
Corvid Sketcher 