A new plan to bring baseball back to the North Bay envisions a short summer league with a dozen teams of mostly local players, and a rolling set-up to dress up existing ball fields in area parks.

The proposed Wine Country Old Fashioned Baseball League is the idea of Dry Creek Valley winery owner Howard Leonhardt (left), who says he developed it after he was unable to purchase an existing minor league team and relocate it to Sonoma County.

The long-running debate over an historic oyster farm in Drakes Estero, within the  the Point Reyes National Seashore,  has jumped from western Marin County to Washington D.C., and shows few signs of cooling off.

Fredrick Smith, Executive Director of the Environmental Action Coalition of West Marin says that, Senator Feinstein's statements to the contrary, he fears that her legislative intervention on behalf of the Drakes Bay Oyster Company will set a bad precedent that could have wide implications.

The fate and future of the Drakes Bay Oyster Company and the Estero has been a long-running and hotly debated issue in the Point Reyes area for years. Recent developments have been chronicled by the Point Reyes Light.

The gorgeous airborne view of the estuary below was taken by Sonoma-based pilot and photographer Robert Campbell . See more of his work here .

Bicycling from Santa Rosa to Seattle is no small accomplishment, but doing it a century ago was a far greater challenge.

 The intent of his 15-day ride to Seattle, explains Bill Harrison, was to repeat the trip made by two young Santa Rosans 100 years earlier. But changes to the landscape over the past century made that impossible in places.

Bill Harrison celebrates his arrival at the landmark fountain on the University of Washington campus was the final destination for both Vic and  Ray—the 1909 riders whose journey was chronicled in the book, Two Wheels North (published by Oregon State University Press), and for Harrison 100 years later.

Interstate 5 was not part of the landscape 100 years ago, but Harrison explains that it now serves as the only possible route in some parts of the trip north. Curiously, though, the legal status of bicyclists varies between states.


Traveling by bicycle is an excellent way to savor the landscape as one passes through it. Harrison says one of his most memorable vistas-from among many-was this view of Mount Shasta, look back the morning he continued on from Yreka.

Harrison also remarked on this view in his online diary from the journey, which you can read here:

Another, larger repeat of the 1909 ride is being planned for later this summer by a group in Sacramento, as a fund-raising event to help fight Histiocytosis, a rare blood disease that primarily affects children under 10 years old.

With another 2 million people expected in the Bay Area by 2035, Greenbelt Alliance is urging local governments to plan now where they are going to live. And they've got some ideas to suggest, too.

Greenbelt Alliance Executive Director Jeremy Madsen (left) points to the east bay town of Hercules as one community that has proactively embraced a smart growth development plan for their city.

 How might that work in the North Bay? Greenbelt Alliance has already prepared a case study of Novato as an example.

There is mounting demand for smaller homes in attractive urban neighborhoods, says Madsen, and he predicts that builders and developers will need little encouragement to move toward meeting that demand.

If we change how the Bay Area grows, says Greenbelt Alliance, we can make our region more climate-friendly, affordable, and economically competitive, while protecting our farms, forests, and watersheds. Read more about the Grow Smart challenge here, or click here to see a regional map of projected residential growth sites.