Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Posts related to different hiking trails I have walked, pictures, and history.
When the summer heat hits in the Sacramento Valley, my fail-safe hiking destination is the Marin Headlands in the Golden Gate Recreational Area. Even after all the spring wildflowers have faded away, there is still plenty of natural beauty to see on the hiking trails above the Pacific Ocean.
The North Fork of The Middle Fork trail is a short little hike right off Mosquito Ridge Road. It is so named because it parallels the North Fork of the Middle Fork of the American River. Because the Placer County Water Agency maintains a dam up-stream this part of the river should have flowing water virtually […]
Even in the midst of losing my water, grabbing onto poison oak bushes to maintain my balance, and enduring intermittent leg cramps, stumbling down to see the foundation of the historic Birdsall dam and Knickerbocker waterfalls still wasn’t the worst hike I’d taken. My mistake was thinking that I was smarter and stronger than the […]
Even though I had visited the Folsom Lake State Recreation Area Peninsula Campground on many occasions, I had never really hiked the established trail system at this park site until December of 2014. The trails at the Peninsula Campground are nice and wide and easily accommodate hikers, bikers and horseback riders. Developed either from old […]
The Knickerbocker creek and waterfalls are pretty spectacular, if, you can get to them. These seasonal waterfalls through Knickerbocker Canyon are fairly inaccessible because of the steep terrain. Located in the Auburn State Recreational Area Park in Cool, Ca, Knickerbocker waterfalls in the rock lined canyon make for a challenging hike/climb to an area few people ever visit.
Before we got to the lake we helped a highly adorned scarab beetle right himself and cross the trail. We also got to see Osprey diving in Round Lake to catch fish. That was a pretty cool sight.
The new age of electricity ushered in the mass transit possibility of street cars. Even today the sight of an electric trolley car rolling down the tracks in this sparsely populated portion of California looks out of place. But the scenery of wheat fields, cattle and sheep grazing has changed little since the first trolley line rolled through the Montezuma Hills.
At the Table Mountain Preserve you get to blaze your own path across the volcanic cap of a mesa and not get trouble. For us, the straightest line to Phantom Falls was hiking through the tall weeds and over volcanic flow where no path existed.
The big attraction is the covered bridge built in 1862 after floods washed out the previous structure. The Point Defiance trail loop provides great views and takes you through a variety of ecological settings.
While I won’t give you my overall running time, the run was approximately 5 miles one way; a gain of 740′, 2 tunnels, and 3 staircases (one was a spiral case), which included over 150 steps.
