Del Valle
Over the ridges and through the lakeside canyons
Now why is it that whenever we feel like an easy ride we never seem to find one?
While the out-and-back East Shore Trail looked on the map like a Sunday cruise along the lakeside,
the pleasant summer ride along grassy fields, docks, and picnics areas lasted little more than a few minutes.
After maybe a mile it became a series of short nasty grinds over ridges and through canyons
to the far western corner of the lake as the sun burned high overhead. Del Valle looks to be a popular
recreational area just south of Livermore, with extensive picnic, fishing and boat launching facilities. It's
a man-made lake with a dam at the western end, although regulations against swimming are minimal so I don't know
if it provides municipal water.
Photos
Click to expand
This was a busy little park along the lakeside near the east park entrance. It still had the feel of summer as people
were fishing, picnicing and boating along the lakeside. The funny sand patterns at the bottom of the second comes from
the picture.
Here were moving away from the main park, and starting to realize this ride isn't going to be the flat trail along
the shore we were hoping for, but will be climbing over that series of hills up yonder on the starboard side.
That hill in the far distance is the endpoint of the trail, about four miles away along the fireroad. The Arroyo parking
lot is just beyond that if you want to ride down to it, but then it's a sharp climb back up.
Whew, finally to that hill. It was a number of steep little up and down grades to get here, but here it did offer nice
views of the lake. Stupid sign screwing up the composition.
Doing an about face from the previous picture, this is looking northward away from the lake. Here can be seen the broad, hazy valley with Livermore with Mount Diablo
in the distance. For some reason Kenny had to finish the trail riding all the way down to the parking lot just to the
left of the golf course.
I was content to just sit here and enjoy the view-- and it gave me a chance to play around with the picture stitching
feature of the camera.
This is a concatenation of four different pictures.
The camera and bundled software seemed to merge them pretty well.
Fortunately, the climbs back weren't as steep as the ones out, so we made our way back
in pretty good time as the sun was starting to set.
The sun is setting much sooner now-- the days of summer are coming to an end.
(b. October 5, 2002)
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This was a busy little park along the lakeside near the east park entrance. It still had the feel of summer as people
were fishing, picnicing and boating along the lakeside. The funny sand patterns at the bottom of the second comes from
the picture.
Here were moving away from the main park, and starting to realize this ride isn't going to be the flat trail along
the shore we were hoping for, but will be climbing over that series of hills up yonder on the starboard side.
That hill in the far distance is the endpoint of the trail, about four miles away along the fireroad. The Arroyo parking
lot is just beyond that if you want to ride down to it, but then it's a sharp climb back up.
Whew, finally to that hill. It was a number of steep little up and down grades to get here, but here it did offer nice
views of the lake. Stupid sign screwing up the composition.
Doing an about face from the previous picture, this is looking northward away from the lake. Here can be seen the broad, hazy valley with Livermore with Mount Diablo
in the distance. For some reason Kenny had to finish the trail riding all the way down to the parking lot just to the
left of the golf course.
I was content to just sit here and enjoy the view-- and it gave me a chance to play around with the picture stitching
feature of the camera.
This is a concatenation of four different pictures.
The camera and bundled software seemed to merge them pretty well.