The Granite of Granite Bay

On May 24, I wrote that we woke at 6:45 at a hotel in the Folsom Historic District and I was able to get my nine year old boys to organize by 7:45. We went downstairs and had fppd before riding over the rainbow bridge and up to Folsom Lake crossing by 9:30.

One of the boys was riding pretty slow but we took in the cool air on the way and got photos. The route I was counting on for accessing the lake shore no longer existed so we went to the next available access at Natoma Street. I noted that access to the lakeside was poorly maintained.

The boys and I looked at mafic stones there— it’s called La Colina Del Lago. The joint between the granite of Granite Bay and the Gabro pluton above New York Creek is right about at the reservoir’s main levee. I found levees four and five really interesting. The gravels, which were all likely brought into the area by truck had both granite and mafic rocks in it.

We followed some e-Bikes over to the lakeshore. I had taken a stop to catch my breath, so the boys got a little bit ahead of me and they were so fast that I thought I had lost them. We went to Folsom Point. The air was still cool there and the boys were skipping rocks. Levee Seven was undergoing construction, so the ride ended up being terrible through there. I couldn’t tell if we could get to Brown’s Ravine, but I used our binoculars and that helped.

Once we made it to the other end of Levee Seven we found a gate blocking access to Green Valley Boulevard near the Sophia Parkway entrance. However, getting into Brown’s Ravine turned out to actually be possible. We went halfway up the lake side to a couple of paths and I was able to find a route into Brown’s assembly.

From there we ascended a couple of other forest paths to Francisco Drive and took a break ata cafe. The boys were righty tired from all of this exertion. We stopped at the store before riding up Kingston Street to visit Lake Forest Elementary where we had ginger ale and visited the playground. Some kid on an E bike kept buzzing us.

From there we followed the path near Inverness and went to Wolf Creek Lane. We had to leave the Lake Forest area around Francisco Drive to enter an adjacent are called Lake Hills. Unfortunately we found gates and fences barring a connection to the “Equestrian Village” near at the end of Wolf Creek Lane. So, instead, we rode Lake Hills Dr to Carnelian where we rode up Norwich to look at a hole under a fence.

From there we climbed Sheffield to Francisco and descended to Guadalupe. We took in the view at Encina both north and south before taking Loma Verde to Lake Hills (we saw the fence with the hole again). We returned to Lake Forest Elementary to take Francisco back to Starbucks. We passed through Brown’s Assembly, but this time went to Lakeridge Oaks Drive and descended to Green Valley, past the fence at Sophia Parkway and along Levee Seven. The last climb was hard.

Once we had rested the ride resumed from Folsom Point to the Johnny Cash Trail. I noted that one of the boy’s bikes was having a chronic problem. The real rear derailer was hard to figure out. It had a lot of problems. However, we descended from there to the Folsom Historic District with no problems beside that. Once we had re-organized at our hotel room, we had some Pizza at Classico and headed to Fat Rabbit for dessert.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.