Save The Date: "Dinner On The Pacific Plate"!

The Point Reyes National Seashore Association annual fundraising event, "Dinner on The Pacific Plate," will take place from 2:00-8:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 8th at Bear Valley Grove in Point Reyes National Seashore.

A series of "Hikes, Walks and Talks" will be offered between 2:00-4:00 p.m.

Cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, accompanied by music by La Liberta and David Dascoe, will take place from 4:30-6:00 p.m., followed by a "Hand-Crafted Trail Dinner and Live Auction" from 6:00-8:30 p.m.

There will be a family hike and separate evening program for young people with childcare, dinner and storytelling by Ane Carla Rovetta.

You can purchase tickets for the event online.

For more information, contact Donna Faure of PRNSA at (415) 663-1200 x 303 or donnaf@ptreyes.org.

Creating "Paintings" With Your iPhone

Marin has some very talented en plein air landscape painters, such as Christin Coy.

But even if (like Dick Jordan) you can't make a painting with real paint and brushes to save your life, the Prisma app for iPhone can turn you into a "artist."

Here's an example: One of Dick's photos looking south toward San Francisco that was taken as we turned onto the Dipsea Trail on a Steep Ravine hike.

The Prisma app is free from Apple's iTunes App Store.

Blog Photo Albums Updated!

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

Apparently Google doesn't know that philosophical approach to technology because it recently junked its long-time online photo album service, Picasa Web albums, archiving all of the Meandering photo albums and, in the process, rendering the links to every one of those albums non-operative.

Links to those photo albums that were included in past hike preview blog posts probably won't work, but the correct links will be used in upcoming hike previews.

"Nothing is constant but change," or so thinks Google, so it changed the links to all of those albums, which Dick Jordan now has revised on the Meandering blog's "Photo Albums" page.

Let Dick know if you find an album link that doesn't work properly and he'll fix it.

A Major Player in China Camp's History Passes On

Most years we hike in or near China Camp State Park on the edge of San Francisco Bay, east of San Rafael. (Click here for photos from past hikes in the area.)

Beginning in the middle of the 19th century, the area was a village populated by Chinese who fished the Bay for shrimp. Remnants of that bygone age were preserved and maintained after the area became part of the California State Park system.

But one Frank Quan, one of the central figures in the history of China Camp, has permanently "gone fishing." He died on Monday, just before he was set to turn 91 next week.

You can read more about Frank Quan in this Marin I-J story and on the Friends of China Camp Website which has a wealth of information about the park.