Nevada County Life

All in all an excellent 4th July Parade in downtown Grass Valley, California.  Thoroughly enjoyed then synchronized shopping carts of the Briar Patch, the Viking long boat….

Driving around Grass Valley today (Monday October 13th), there’s still a load of trees that have green leaves, but more and more are showing signs of fall including the one below on South Auburn Street (Not far from the intersection of Empire Street).  

And some trees are just brilliant at the moment, like the one on Race Street, an absolute cacophony of blazing color.  However, on Conaway Ave, running parallel to Race St, there’s a tree that has already shown fall color and is now almost bare!

Taking a small walk around Grass Valley this morning (October 10th) revealed that Fall is here in Grass Valley, and I don’t mean just because the temperatures were low (33F as a low today)!  Yes, as well as the nip in the air, the leaves are changing color, but there’s no overall pattern at the moment.  

A couple of trees have changed and already lost their leaves, but there’s still a predominance of green leaves in the trees.  Actually this is kind of nice as the trees that have changed and are displaying their autumnal colors are standing out against the green backdrop.

Rain is expected in Nevada County this weekend starting late friday and tailing off on Saturday, with temperatures dropping off by about ten to fifteen degrees compared to recent days.  Over the mountains snow levels are expected to remain about the mountain passes until the cold front sweeps through, dropping the snow levels to around 6500 ft.

Here’s the current forecast for Grass Valley from NOAA.

Now that the heat of summer is abating in California, it’s definitely time to get out on foot and enjoy some of the sights in Nevada County.  Grass Valley is lucky to have some excellent walking trails in the Empire Mine State Historic park, just to the east of the city.

There are 3 main entrances to the park:

• Visitor center, with ample parking and access to the main exhibits in the park, including the mining museum and Bourne cottage
• The Union Hill trail area, with parking at the end of Gold Hill Drive
• Penn Gate, on East Empire St, which has parking for cars and a separate area for horse trailers

From Penn Gate the well maintained gravel Hardrock trail (more…)