Spending time eight miles north of Bodega Bay meant that I could explore and sketch subjects off the beaten path (Highway One). I had been to BB many times but I had never heard of the Children’s Bell Tower. Being an educator I wanted to learn more about it.

The tower has a very interesting and tragic genesis that starts in Messina, Italy. It was here in 1994 that seven year old Nicolas Green and his family were vacationing in Italy.

Local Mafia mistakenly thought his parents were jewelers and followed the family’s car. They fired shots into the back of the car, a bullet hitting Nicolas in the head.

He was rushed to a hospital and he died the next day on October 1st.

The family donated his organs to help other Italian children. In the aftermath organ donations went up in Italy and many lives were saved.

In the Green’s hometown of Bodega Bay, a monument was erected for their slain son.

A bell tower was constructed near the Community Center. The tower consists of 140 bells that were donated from churches, schools, families, and individuals all over Italy. One bell was donated by the Martinelli Foundry, they have been making bells for the Catholic Church for 1,000 years. This bell was blessed by Pope John Paul II and it crowns the tower.

I walked out to the tower and started to sketch. Let’s just say it was complicated. For my first sketch I used a loose style with solid lines with a brush pen (featured sketch). I think I captured something about the tower but I wanted another crack at the tower so I returned the following morning after breakfast at the Tides.

The views from the panoramic windows as outstanding and the drama of wildlife beats anything on television. A roosting flock of marbled godwits and willet were sent into the air my marauding peregrine.

I returned to the Bell Tower, warmed by the fall sun. A breeze off the Bay sounded the bells on the tower as I sketched.

One sketching destination in Bodega Bay I planned to visit was Hole in the Head. The head being Bodega Head.

When you visit the Hole today it is a serene pond with gulls bathing, sparrows singing from the trees, turkey vultures rocking in the overhead currents, and reeds gently blowing in the wind. But the 160 foot hole has a complicated past.

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG &E) planned to build the first commercially viable nuclear power plant in the United States. And the site they chose for this new source of energy was Bodega Head.

In the late 1950s Bodega Bay was a fishing port surrounded by farms and grazing land. It was far from the tourist destination it is today and still a few years off from the film that put the area on the map: Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963).

After obtaining permits, PG & E started construction on the power plant by digging a 160 foot hole for the foundation. Local resistance to the nuclear plant started in 1958. This also coincided with a growing understanding of plate tectonics and earthquakes.

The plant’s location was two miles from the active San Andreas Fault. The fault that slipped on the early morning of April 18, 1906 creating the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. They also discovered minor faults directly underneath the planned plant site. This combined with the protest (dubbed the “birth of the anti-nuclear movement”) put a halt to plans and construction ended in 1964 with a very deep hole in Bodega Head.

Overtime, rainwater filed in the deep pit and it took on the appearance of a placid pond. There is a boardwalk that takes you to the edge of the pond and a fence that prevents any swimmers. Hole in the Head is no kiddie pool, it is all deep end.

I walked out to the boardwalk and sketched the view of the historic non-nuclear power plant that launched a movement.

This year we have the week off for Thanksgiving and the north coast is calling.

After looking into many options I settled on a pad with a sunroom with amazing views on the Sonoma Coast between Bodega Bay and Jenner (the end of the Russian River).

This would give me the time to slow down and sketch an area which I had mainly driven through. Now I would put boots to dirt and sketch history, nature, and amazing coastal views.

That’s if my knee didn’t feel better. I’m at the age where I wake up with a new pain. First it was the left elbow and now the right. I woke up Saturday with pain in my left knee. How this happened I do not know. Perhaps I shouldn’t have played soccer with my students on Free Friday. Was it the left footed shot from the left wing? Yes I scored! Was it almost worth scoring against nine year olds? Maybe.

I made four pre-trip sketches, some are included in this post.

To help visualize the path of the San Andreas Fault through the land I would be traveling, I sketched it out on a map. At the bottom I drew from a famous photo of a train put on its side by the San Francisco Earthquake. It was taken about 30 miles away from the epicenter, near San Francisco, in the town of Point Reyes Station.

On Veteran’s Day I headed out to Point Reyes and the Estero Trailhead. My destination: Drake’s Head.

About ten years previously I headed out with this headland as my destination but was halting by a mad cow across the trail so I reversed course.

I hit the trail from the parking lot at 8:20, and I hoped no cows would be blocking my path.

I made it to the wooden bridge at the edge of Home Bay by 8:47, yes I was noting times as I reached certain landmarks. I looked into the tidal waters below for bat rays and leopard sharks, no dice.

After the wooden bridge the Estero Trail started to climb and I had great views of Home Bay and the cormorants, buffleheads, and pelicans on the waters. Near shore was a family of three river otters terrorizing, as they do, the local wildlife.

The Estero trail rose and fell over the curvaceous shoreline until I reached the junction of the Estero and the Sunset Beach Trail (at 9:30).

Here I took a left turn over the open country that is also grazing land.

There was a lack of bovine in the open pasture and the occasional dried out cow pie and the empty old cattle trough were the only reminders that cows had used this land for grazing. So it looked like I would finally make it to Drake’s Head.

It felt good to be in the open plains, with the wind in my ears, stirring up meadowlarks underfoot and watching a harrier with it’s kestrel escort. On the low ridge was a buck that I almost took for an elk.

As I neared the headland, I approached a small grove of eucalyptus trees with a very vocal red-tailed hawk. This call is used liberally in movies and nature documentaries and is very recognizable (whether the raptor featured is red-tail or not). Buteo jamaicensis is very quiet for most of the year, especially out of the breeding season. Why this hawk was so vocal was a mystery. One of those mysteries that keeps me hiking out to explore nature.

I summited the low headland with the Limatour Split in front of me and the entrance to Drake’s Estero and beyond, Chimney Rock.

I found a sandy hollow sketching perch at the edge of the headland and pulled out my panoramic sketchbook to capture the incredible view, fully realizing that my sketch could never truly capture the beauty of what was before me.

After my sketch and a snack I returned back on the Drake’s Head Trail and this time the nature really began to show. On a ridge was a group of four bull elk.

Along the hike I had seen kestrels, harriers, an osprey, and a red-tailed hawk. Now it was time for a First of Season (FOS) raptor, a wintering king raptor. A buteo or broad-wing hawk. I first saw a soaring hawk appearing from my left. This raptor looked a little different than your resident red-tail.

This was Buteo regalis, the ferruginous hawk. This was a harbinger of winter. A raptor that spends its time hunting in the wide open spaces, south of its breeding range.

I decided to up my continuous-line sketching game with crossing the gutter of my Stillman & Birn panoramic watercolor journal.

This style of sketching takes focus, stamina, and throwing a lot of what you know out the window.

If I were to compare continuous-line sketching to a musical genre I would say it was definitely jazz. You sketch with a lot of improvisation, transitions, soloing, and riffing. You sketch the line between success and failure!

For my subject I chose to sketch the complicated view from Sunset Reservoir Park. In the foreground are the houses, trees, and churches leading down to the edge of San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean beyond. On the horizon lies the curvaceous flanks of Marin County

I did this sketch over two consecutive days: Day 1: linework and Day 2: watercolor wash.

While my sketch my sketch is not the most accurate representation of the scene before me, it is pure improvisation and joy!

In Centennial Park, near Vanderbilt University, you come upon one of the more unexpected surprises in Nashville, Tennessee, an exact replica of the Parthenon. What?!!

This Parthenon is more whole than the real ruins in Athens. But how did it get here?

The replica was built in 1897 for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. That would be about 1,892 years after the original Parthenon was built. Nashville’s nickname is “Athens of the South”.

It was supposed to be a temporary structure used for the celebration but was rebuilt. The original in Athens housed a large statue of Athena, which no longer exists.

Great effort was made to make the replica as historically accurate as possible, both the exterior and the interior.

I found a sketching spot under a shady tree (it was in the mid-80s even in early October) and sketched the impressive classical architecture of the neo-Parthenon.

In 1982 the Nashville sculptor Alan LeQuire was hired to recreate a 42 foot tall statue of Athena for the interior of the Parthenon. The statue was finally unveiled on May 20, 1990.

The Parthenon was featured at the end of Robert Altman’s masterpiece Nashville. But don’t talk to Nashvillians about the film as Altman was poking fun at the city and the music industry. It didn’t help that he didn’t employ local musicians in any of the roles either as actors or songwriters. This film Nashville is not well loved in Nashville.

In Nashville’s Music Row they turned houses and other repurposed buildings into recording studios. In this post I visited and sketched two. Of these repurposed studios. One in Music Row and the other in East Nashville. But they do share someone in common: Neil Young.

On Grand Avenue is an unassuming Victorian house that was turned into a studio in 1970.

This was Quadrofonic Studios and some incredible music was recording within these walls. The studio changed hands and is now called Sienna Studios.

The album that brought me to Grand Avenue on this morning was Neil Young’s album Harvest (1972).

Young was booked on the Johnny Cash Show which was filmed at the Ryman Auditorium. He ended up recording some songs at Quad Studios with local Nashville musicians.

Some of my favorite songs from the album were recorded in this unassuming house including the opener “Out on a Weekend”, “Harvest”, “Old Man”, and one of Neil’s most well known songs “Heart of Gold”.

Many other artists have recorded here, Jimmy Buffet recorded “Margaritaville” here as well as Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away”.

I stood across Grand Avenue and sketched the studio housed in a residential home.

On Thursday morning I headed across the Cumberland River to East Nashville. My sketching destination was a repurposed movie theater and is now Woodland Studios.

It was here that Neil recorded parts of his favorite album, Comes a Time in 1976/77.

Many other artists have recorded here including Joan Baez, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Jimmy Buffett, Kansas, Tammy Wynette, the Indigo Girls, Robert Plant, Rosanna Cash, and George Strait. Charlie Daniel’s wrote and recorded his biggest hit “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” at Woodland. The Oak Ridge Boys recorded their hit “Elvira” here.

In 1998 the studio was damaged by a tornado leaving the former movie house in a state of disrepair and condemned.

It remained unused and unusable until Gillian Welch and David Rawlings bought and repaired Woodland in 2001.

In 2020 the was damaged by another tornado which ripped the roof off the building. It was rebuilt again.

Welch and Rawlings recorded some of their albums at Woodland including “Revival”, “The Harrow & the Harvest” and their 2024 album titled “Woodland” featuring the distinctive Woodland Studios sign on the album’s cover.