Coppertone and I joined others on an guided hike organized by Jack London State Park Partners.  The topic was orchard adjacent to Camp Via on what used to be Sonoma Developmental Center property.  We'd hike out to the orchard and learn more about its history and the plans to restore a portion of it.

We started our hike at the ranch near the park entrance.  Taking the Lake, Mountain and the Old Fallen Bridge trails we ended up at the orchard.  The orchard is over 100 years old.  Originally built and maintained by residents of what would become the Sonoma Developmental Center.  Apples, apricots, cherries, grapes, pears, peaches, prunes and plums were just a few of the fruits grown here.  With shifting public sentiment about the use of labor from such facilities the orchard was eventually abandoned and overrun by shrubs.

The state park and then Jack London State Park Partners hatched a plan to restore the orchard as an historic resource.  Trees that had survived would be nurished and new plantings would conform to early 1900's practices to maintain its original character.  In addition, the fruit generated is harvested and distributed to families in need by Farm to Pantry.  In 2023, over 7,000 pounds of fruit from the orchard were donated!  We learned a lot during the trip.

We returned to the trailhead via a different route, using the Vineyard Trail.  This allowed us to stop by the Grandmother Tree, the largest and oldest Redwood Tree in the park.

Coppertone and I signed up for a guided wildflower hike on this day.  We saw a bunch of different varieties of flowers but also put in more mileage than we had hiked in quite a long time.  At the end of the day we were very tired!

Among the flowers we observed and recorded were Pacific Hounds Tongue, Common Pacific Pea, Red Larkspur, Bermuda Buttercup, Fernald's Iris, Blue Dicks, Miner's Lettuce, Popcorn Flower, Starry False Lilly of the Valley, Miniature Lupine, Lupine, Baby Blue Eyes, White Nemophilia, California Poppy, California Manroot, Blue Eyed Grass and several others that I failed to record properly.

This hike ascended up the mountain via the Mountain Trail.  From there it followed the Sonoma Ridge Trail all the way to the end at the Eliot Family Loop Trail.  So we were able to map out a trail segment we had never visited before.

Coppertone and I took advantage of a relatively dry weekend day to go for a walk into the back of Jack London State Park.  All of the natural trails were certainly quagmires of mud from the days of incessant rain.  The paved road of this hike was the perfect option for us.

At the gate near the start of Orchard Road we came across two neighbors who were with friends starting their walk.  We ended up going with them and chatting the entire way.

We hiked uphill to the old Camp Via site, looped around the camp and then doubled back down to the Developmental Center.  It was a nice bit of exercise that totaled out to a bit less than 4 miles.  And our shoes did not end up caked in mud!

I had a couple of goals during this trip to Jack London.  First, I needed to map the Upper Fallen Bridge Trail segment, which had escaped my notice in the past.  Secondly, I wanted to try out saving geocaches to a saved list on my phone to confirm I could see its details and navigate to it even without cell phone coverage.  Success on both accounts.

We spotted a large number of ground squirrels darting around the vineyard.  Later in the hike we spotted a large number of dead "meat bees" around a piece what might have been chicken on the ground.  We're not sure what happened there.

Coppertone and I did a balloon hike covering a bit less than 5 miles including our needed trail.  The weather was a bit weird.  Kind of warm and very still.  The stillness made the warmth feel even hotter than it was.  A little breeze now and then would have helped a great deal.

Relief came when we got to the middle of the Upper Fallen Bridge Trail.  The temperature in the North Ashbury Creek valley here was noticeably cooler than elsewhere on this day.  A very pleasant stroll here.

Coppertone was having some blister issues with her shoes, so we took the most direct route down the mountain at that point.  We did stop along the Lake Service Road trail to find the geocache mentioned earlier then we called it a day.

Coppertone and I wanted to get some more miles in before the end of the year.  But we also did not want to walk a muddy mess.  So we opted to hike into Jack London State Historic Park from the back Sonoma Developmental Center.  We'd done this hike a couple of times before.  It was not until I'm logging this hike now that I realized it was almost exactly one year ago today (off by one day) that we made the same trek!

Today we stayed on Orchard Road alone.  This ensured a paved, non-muddy surface for the entirety of our walk.  The pavement was often wet, but not slick.  We're planning on hitting a non-paved trail in a couple of days.  Hopefully a few days of sunshine will give the ample moisture some time to soak into the earth.

The hike from SDC to Camp Via is all uphill, though the overall elevation gain was not that bad.  In all we gained about 700 feet heading out.  On the flipside, the path back was gravity assisted all the way to our trailhead.

Coppertone and I parked at the Sonoma Developmental Center (SDC) and hiked in the back way along Orchard Road.  This allowed us quicker access to several trail segments around Fern Lake that we had not yet hiked and mapped.  There was plenty of parking at the state facility, which is in the process of being decommissioned.

Orchard Road is a paved road and hardly constitutes a true hiking experience.  However, it is closed to all traffic with the exception of some employees.  So it provides an easy path into Jack London State Park.  The road actually ends at Camp Via which technically remains part of SDC and is completely enclosed by the park.

Along Orchard Road is Eldridge Cemetery.  SDC patients (previously SDC was known as The California Home for the Care and Training of Feebleminded Children) and 2 employees were buried between 1892 and 1939.  Headstones were removed in 1964 to protect the privacy of the families so all of the graves appear unmarked now.

We took a right onto Bay Trail to start a counterclockwise circumnavigation of Fern Lake.  Fern Lake Trail and Inner Fern Lake Trail were used to complete the loop.  Fern Lake seemed bigger than I was expecting.  I was also a bit surprised by the number of ducks and other waterfowl in the lake.   While hiking near the lake there was a near constant cacophony of duck squabbling or flights initiated or terminated in the water.  Lots of reeds and plants along the lake shore provides ample cover for the birds.

The trail segments around the lake were single track packed dirt trails.  "Real" hiking, if you like.  One section, which corresponded with the lowest elevation above the lake were a bit overgrown and the surface moist, despite the dry winter thus far.  During times of heavy rain this route may not be pleasant, if at all possible.  We also say a bit of poison oak, so be careful out there.

Part of the decision on where to hike also hinged on how many geocaches we would be able to find while we hiked.  In the end we snagged 8 new caches.  I also had the leasure of picking up a tick in the process, but hopefully got it removed before it could do any damage.

Knowing about the back entrance to the park means mapping out additional segments around the historic orchard area should be in our plans in 2021.

Coppertone and I had decided to revisit Jack London State Park earlier Saturday when the forecast was for no rain for the next week.  Saturday night it rained, but we didn't change our plans.  So we encountered some fairly muddy trails in certain parts of the park.  Coppertone indicated that it's "always" muddy when we visit.  It wasn't until later I logged onto hikingtrailhead.com and saw that our two previous hiking visits here were in January of different years.  Not exactly the best time to avoid rain and mud!

We ventured into the park's SE corner to hike some of the trails near Fern Lake and the historic orchards.  Our preferred path there, Vineyard Trail, was closed for the "season".  We're not sure what the season is, but I would guess it has something to do with winter and it's rains.  We doubled back and went down Quarry, which bypassed the closed segment.

We did a loop around Fern Lake, leaving the park property for a brief period of time.  When we looped back into the park we had intended to circumnavigate the lake on Inner Fern Lake Trail.  However, the trail from Orchard Road seemed to be a bit overgrown and had some brush piled up on it, something that's often done when park managers don't want people walking down trails.

We had another option in Red Hill Road (it's a jeep trail maybe, not a real road) that we took to SDC's Camp Via.  A large tree had recently fallen across the trail that we had to skirt under, but it didn't provide too much of an obstacle.

From Camp Via we we stopped by to visit the nearby Ancient Redwood.  A kiosk as we approached seemed to highlight a nice, but scarcely impression grove of Redwoods that gave Coppertone a bit of a letdown.  But we continued down the path and were rewarded with a suitably impressive giant that clearly lorded over the young upstarts we had spotted a bit earlier.  This old giant has apparently seen 2,000 years of history.  Very impressive.

We completed a loop around the edges of the orchards, crossed over South Asbury Creek and used the Fallen Bridge trails to get back to Mountain Trail for the main (and somewhat less muddy) path back to the trailhead.

Coppertone and I decided to make our first trip to the park that started the 500 mile Klondike Challenge this year in which we are both participating.  The recent rains let up on Sunday and we decided to take a chance with the mud.  We brought extra shoes to wear on the way home, just in case.  Our boots got plenty muddy and footing was a bit slippery on some of the steeper downslopes, particularly on Coon Trap Trail.

After discussing our options we opted for the circuitous Sonoma Ridge Trail loop that ultimately resulted in over 10 miles of hiking for us.  By the end of the hike we were plenty tired.  Despite the heavy tree cover over much of the path we still managed to find several impressive overlooks peering into Sonoma Valley below.

We were surprised by the number of buildings and structures remaining from Jack's agricultural experiments.  The information signs that discuss the poor farmers of the Sonoma Valley in the early 1900's seem a stark contrast to the wine culture that predominates today.