Category Archives: Seasons

Dia de los Muertos • Day of the Dead Cemetery Tour is SOLD OUT! See you there….

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Filed under Events, Fall
Day of the Dead


Experience Sonoma History
on a Walk through Sonoma Mountain Cemetery

Saturday, October 29
Times: 10:00 OR 12:30 pm
SOLD OUT

dayofdead

Sonoma Overlook Trail Stewards invite you to join us on a lively, informative walk through our historic cemetery with our own amateur historian Fred Allebach.

Meet ranchers and ranch hands, real estate tycoons, farmers and farriers, carpenters and stone masons, quarrymen, grocers, butchers, bakers, maybe a candlestick maker, and many more!

This fundraising event is limited to 25 participants per hike. Your $35 donation includes the walking tour, cookies and cider. All proceeds go directly to support Sonoma Overlook Trail. The Overlook is funded solely by private donations.

Sssssss…Cicadas!

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Filed under Insects, Spring

Cicadas are singing on the Overlook! Plus, the wildflower explosion continues, so come on over and have an Out of Africa moment.

Can you name the wildflowers on the trail?

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Filed under Flowers, Plant Life, Spring, Summer

Enjoy the wildflowers on the trail. . .and identify them! The Hikers Gallery at the kiosk has the Spring/Summer wildflowers in bloom pictured with their names. Thank you Dan Noreen and Roy Tennant for putting up this display.

The Wildflowers are Busting Out…Here’s How to Find ’em….

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Filed under Flowers, Plant Life, Spring

Walking the Overlook and Montini trails is a treasure hunt these days, with an artist’s palette of wildflowers making themselves seen early this year. Grab one of our newly updated Wildflower brochures at the kiosk, and take a gander at the new Wildlife Panel as well to get an overview of all of the flora and fauna.

“On March 9th, a beautiful new Nature Panel was installed in the Kiosk at the main trailhead of the Overlook Trail. Funded solely by donations from Trail Stewards, the new panel features all of the up-to-date common names of many of the wonderful birds, mammals, reptiles and plants that help make the Trail such a delightful place. To assist even the casual hiker with identification, several of the most frequently seen and most lovely wildflowers are depicted in greater detail in a special expanded section. Superb original artwork by Irene Guidici Ehret is now also joined by artist Don Boucher’s stunning portrait of the native Gray Fox. The Overlook Trail Stewards that assisted in the installation of the panel included Michael Studebaker, Kurt Teuber and Dan Noreen.”

Dan Noreen, Overlook Flora Specialist

Rain, Rain, Please Stay AND Come Again Another Day!

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Filed under Seasons, Trail Maintenance, Weather, Winter
Waterfall on Holstein Hill Trail, Montini Preserve

Today, the second day of an “atmospheric river” storm, I hiked the Montini and Overlook properties to check out how well the water was getting off the trails. More water was running off than I recall ever seeing before, although I had missed the October storm which by all accounts was a gangbuster.

You know it’s a major storm when the waterfall on the Holstein Hill trail on the Montini Preserve is running as it was today (see photo).

Most of the trail structures put in place to get water off the trail were working as intended, although a few need to be cleaned out or enhanced. The properties are so rocky, however, that in places water seeps from the hill above and sheets over the trail. In other words, there’s just no getting around having water on the trail, so be careful.