Caution! NOT a
bus video! Rattlesnake, singing frog, baby fish.
Discovery Channel eat your hearts out! (uh-huh...)
Getting Firewood on Road 54: An encapsulated example of what we do for fun. Since we heat our house with wood, and we love to drive around in the mountains, might as well have fun, too! County Road 54 and offshoots, Sierra County, CA.
Blairsden River Romp: Just a tiny little joyride through a grassy glade in the pine forest next to the Feather River just outside of Blairsden. Nothing too exciting, really, but after a day of fruitless fishing, it was fun to mess around in the drying-up ruts left by others!
Usal Road Condensed: The "impossible" passage through Usal Road---from the "Four Corners" area of the very northmost reaches of Mendocino County to the upper end of California's famed coastal Highway One. From the hour-and-a-half of edited video of the full version of the Usal Road story, I present you this minimized version. Hopefully only the most salient moments are presented.
Bart on Buttes Road: A spur-of-the-moment
jaunt up Buttes Road from Sierra City one fine day. I went up there to a certain spot where the light was just right in
order to get some shots for another video (see www.shastasnowtrip.com , in 2006, Video Clips,
"Messerbuses") and since it
was such a fine afternoon, and I had two cameras with me, I decided to go for it, and see how high I could get before the
snow stopped me. Quite high was the answer! I got my exercise in that day, as I had to run up the hill, set up the cameras,
run back down to Bart, drive past the cameras, run back to retrieve the cameras, drive to a different spot, rinse, repeat....
Anyway, this is definitely one of the more successful videos in that some of the steepness of the road and the dizzying
heights upon which the road rose came across despite the "flattening" phenomenon that plagues photographers when trying to
portray the ruts, rocks, and steepness of any situation...indeed, it seems that the challenging nature of a situation is
frequently nullified by the effects of a lens....you just have to be there! (Which, of course, is the point of this site!)
On this outing, I didn't make it to the top (where the OHV trail heads toward the lookout), as there was suddenly a series of
snowdrifts that would have made my going much tougher (impossible?), but also much more dangerous. Since I was already out
on a limb, so to speak, in that no-one knew I was up there, I was alone, and I had just the bare minimum of tools and
extraction gear, I opted to call it quits when I got to the snow, and headed back down the mountain, now with one of the cameras
strapped to the side of the bus, and the other behind the seat on a tripod. This is where I got some of the more scenic
shots of the video, as the sun was coming from behind for much of the descent.
The Sierra Buttes loom a little more than 4000
feet above Sierra City, California, (4200') which is located on Hwy. 49 an hour or so east of Nevada City/Grass Valley.
A total elevation of 8587 feet above sea level is a modest claim, but when you're out on it, scrambling up a narrow, rocky
road in an old Volkswagen, it seems rather large, indeed! At the very top, after an OHV trail and a ½-mile walk, one can
check out an amazing 360-degree view from the lookout, which is perched on the rock, accessed by a reputedly scary metal
staircase. The Buttes Road joins up with a whole mess of other back roads---you can travel in almost any direction once you
get out on this network---the Lakes Basin is on the northern side of the Buttes, and many mines, ruins, cliffs, forests,
old roads and towns, etc. await the adventurous.....keep checking back to this site for more reports.
