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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
With California’s diverse landscape, State Parks offers a wide variety of activities for adventurers of any skill level, from swimming, hiking, camping, boating to off-highway vehicle recreation.
The Golden State’s 280 parks have something for everyone wanting to escape the hustle and bustle for some fun and relaxation in nature.
Two of those parks — Clear Lake State Park and Anderson Marsh State Historic Park — are located entirely within Lake County.
State Parks is honoring the service of veterans, and active and reserve military members, by offering free admission to 142 participating state park units on Memorial Day – May 26. Clear Lake State Park and Anderson Marsh State Historic Park are both participating in that event.
The list of participating park units can be found here.
As you head out to your favorite destination, following simple safety precautions such as wearing a properly fitted life jacket or proper riding gear, avoiding alcohol, and knowing one’s limits while engaged in aquatic activities, can help save lives and ensure a memorable outing.
To help ensure a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend for all, State Parks reminds visitors of the following tips.
Plan ahead
Know before you go: Check parks.ca.gov for conditions, hours and local guidelines.
Check the weather: Dress appropriately, stay hydrated and use sun protection.
Prepare an Itinerary: No matter what type of recreational activity you are planning, leave an itinerary of your trip with a family member or friend with information such as the names and ages of all participants, your travel destination, and your expected return date. This will provide law enforcement personnel with essential information if an emergency response may be needed.
Learn the rules of recreating in boats and OHVs: There are laws specific to operating OHVs on public lands and boats on California’s waterways. For boating laws, please visit BoatCalifornia.com. OHV regulations are also available to review online.
Be Water-Wise
Wear a life jacket: Water-related accidents can happen suddenly and rapidly. If you are going in or near the water, make sure you and everyone with you, especially children, wear properly fitting, U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jackets. Wearing a life jacket is the best way to increase your chances of survival during an incident. View locations where public agencies and private organizations offer to loan life jackets to the public.
Supervise children: Appoint a designated “water watcher,” taking turns with other adults. Never assume someone is watching your children.
Know your limits: Swimming in a lake, ocean or river is different from swimming in a pool. Waves, tides, strong rip currents and other water hazards can appear quickly and provide little time to act.
In an emergency: Seek help from a lifeguard or call 911.
Ocean rip currents: If you get caught in a rip current, stay calm and do not fight the current. Swim or float parallel to the shore until you are out of the current and then swim toward the shore.
Avoid alcohol
Operating a recreational vehicle, including a boat or an off-highway vehicle (OHV), with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08% or more is against the law. Impaired boaters can be arrested even with a lower BAC if the conditions are not safe and your boat can be impounded.
Some parks do have alcohol bans. Check each specific park website to determine if there are local ordinances concerning alcohol.
Practice fire safety
Build an open campfire. Select a clear area away from fuels such as logs, brush or decaying leaves and needles.
Never leave a fire unattended and fully extinguish it before leaving. Keep water and a shovel nearby.
Do not build the fire larger than necessary.
Respect the land and leave no trace
Pack it in, pack it out. Leave no trace behind by bringing a trash bag. Put food waste, napkins, single-use food wrappers, and other waste in the bags until it can be properly disposed of. For human waste, the use of waste alleviation gel bags or other portable toilet options is recommended.
Please haul back large broken items, such as pop-up canopies, beach chairs, and coolers, and dispose of them properly at a local garbage site. Leaving these items on the beach or park or ‘near’ a trash bin can be considered illegal dumping.
Enhance your park experience
Download the what3words and OuterSpatial apps to help ensure safety and stay up to date on park happenings.
what3words: Visitors can now use the what3words tool, an innovative location technology app, that provides users with a simple way to communicate precise locations in emergency situations or provide directions to family and friends in any of the 280 state parks. what3words allows dispatchers with state-of-the-art technology to assist visitors in the event they become lost, stranded or who otherwise need help from emergency services.
OuterSpatial: Experience a safer outdoor adventure with the OuterSpatial app — your ultimate guide to California State Parks. Navigate through a user-friendly interactive map, receive accurate directions, and stay updated in real-time for secure park exploration.
With 280 state parks encompassing over 340 miles of coastline, 970 miles of lake and river frontage, and 5,200 miles of trails, California offers something for everyone, and these public lands belong to us all. Let’s work together to keep them clean, safe, and accessible.
You can find additional safety tips and information on backpacking, biking, camping, horseback trails, and laws at parks.ca.gov/SafetyTips. To find a state park near you, visit parks.ca.gov.
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- Written by: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA’s Perseverance took this selfie on May 10, 2025. The small dark hole in the rock in front of the rover is the borehole made when Perseverance collected its latest sample. The small puff of dust left of center and below the horizon line is a dust devil. Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
A Martian dust devil photobombed NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover as it took a selfie on May 10 to mark its 1,500th sol (Martian day) exploring the Red Planet. At the time, the six-wheeled rover was parked in an area nicknamed “Witch Hazel Hill,” an area on Jezero Crater’s rim that the rover has been exploring over the past five months.
“The rover self-portrait at the Witch Hazel Hill area gives us a great view of the terrain and the rover hardware,” said Justin Maki, Perseverance imaging lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission. “The well-illuminated scene and relatively clear atmosphere allowed us to capture a dust devil located 3 miles to the north in Neretva Vallis.”
The selfie also gives the engineering teams a chance to view and assess the state of the rover, its instruments, and the overall dust accumulation as Perseverance reached the 1,500-sol milestone. (A day on Mars is 24.6 hours, so 1,500 sols equals 1,541 Earth days.)
The bright light illuminating the scene is courtesy of the high angle of the Sun at the time the images composing the selfie were taken, lighting up Perseverance’s deck and casting its shadow below and behind the chassis. Immediately in front of the rover is the “Bell Island” borehole, the latest sampling location in the Witch Hazel Hill area.
How Perseverance did it
This newest selfie, Perseverance’s fifth since the mission began, was stitched together on Earth from a series of 59 images collected by the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera at the end of the robotic arm. It shows the rover’s remote sensing mast looking into the camera. To generate the version of the selfie with the mast looking at the borehole, WATSON took three additional images, concentrating on the reoriented mast.
“To get that selfie look, each WATSON image has to have its own unique field of view,” said Megan Wu, a Perseverance imaging scientist from Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego. “That means we had to make 62 precision movements of the robotic arm. The whole process takes about an hour, but it’s worth it. Having the dust devil in the background makes it a classic. This is a great shot.”
The dust covering the rover is visual evidence of the rover’s journey on Mars: By the time the image was captured, Perseverance had abraded and analyzed a total of 37 rocks and boulders with its science instruments, collected 26 rock cores (25 sealed and 1 left unsealed), and traveled more than 22 miles (36 kilometers).
“After 1,500 sols, we may be a bit dusty, but our beauty is more than skin deep,” said Art Thompson, Perseverance project manager at JPL. “Our multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator is giving us all the power we need. All our systems and subsystems are in the green and clicking along, and our amazing instruments continue to provide data that will feed scientific discoveries for years to come.”
The rover is currently exploring along the western rim of Jezero Crater, at a location the science team calls “Krokodillen.”
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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
A previous event at the Ely Stage Stop in Kelseyville, California. Courtesy photo.
KELSEYVILLE, Calif. — An upcoming event will raise funds for the Lake County Historical Society’s Ely Stage Stop Carriage House project.
The Ely Carriage House Hoedown will take place from 4 to 9 p.m. Saturday, June 7.
Step back into the 1880s for a big tri-tip dinner, an evening of music and dancing, yard games, hay rides, silent auction, raffle baskets, and a chance to see many of Lake County's historic carriages.
Join a party for a good cause. Lake County's biggest collection of historic horse-drawn wagons and carriages need a home so the public can enjoy them.
The Hoedown Party will raise funds for the construction of a new carriage house on the grounds of the Ely Stage Stop Museum located at 9921 Soda Bay Road, just north of Kitt's Corner off Highway 29.
The Ely Museum's Oak Grove will be the place for a tri-tip dinner by Smokin S BBQ (vegetarian option available), music by the Fargo Brothers, blacksmith demonstrations and much more.
A mail carriage at the Ely Stage Stop. Courtesy photo.
Tickets are $80/person and can be purchased online at Carriage House Hoedown, or in person at the Ely Museum.
To sponsor a table and receive eight tickets (depending on the level), fill out the form here.
The Ely Stage Stop is an all-volunteer, all-donation run public museum operated by the Lake County Historical Society since 2011.
The grounds contain the 1860s Jamison and Ely Family ranch house and stage stop, two display barns, the restored 1890s Kelseyville jail, a 1906 San Francisco Cable Car, displays of historic Lake County farm machinery, tractors and much more.
For more information visit the Hoedown Fundraiser Dinner event page or call Event Committee Chair Bill Lane at 707-349-3453.
One of the historic carriages at the Ely Stage Stop. Courtesy photo.
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- Written by: LAKE COUNTY NEWS REPORTS
The CHP began its annual statewide Memorial Day Holiday Enforcement Period, or HEP, on Friday, May 23, at 6:01 p.m. It will continue through Monday, May 26, at 11:59 p.m.
To help maintain safety on California’s roadways, CHP officers will be vigilant for impaired and reckless drivers and motorists who fail to buckle up.
“Our top priority is keeping the public safe, not just during the holidays but daily,” said CHP Commissioner Sean Duryee. “Buckling up is one of the easiest and most effective ways to protect yourself and your passengers in a crash. Our officers will be out in force to help everyone arrive at their destination safely.”
In addition to CHP officers driving traditional black-and-white patrol vehicles, motorists are reminded that they may encounter the CHP’s new generation of low-profile specially marked patrol vehicles on the roadway.
These fully marked patrol vehicles blend into traffic just enough to observe the most reckless and dangerous driving behaviors without immediate detection.
Last year, 42 people lost their lives in crashes across California during Memorial Day weekend.
Tragically, nearly half of all vehicle occupants killed in a crash within CHP jurisdiction were not wearing seatbelts.
CHP officers also made more than 1,100 arrests for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
California law mandates that all drivers and passengers aged eight and older must wear seatbelts. Children under eight need to be properly secured in an appropriate child passenger safety seat or booster seat situated in the back seat of the vehicle. Children under two must also ride in a rear-facing car seat unless they weigh more than 40 pounds or are taller than 40 inches.
This year, the CHP’s holiday enforcement effort coincides with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s designation of May 19 to June 1 as the national “Click it or Ticket” mobilization campaign.
Throughout this awareness initiative, CHP personnel will concentrate their enforcement efforts on seat belt and child safety seat violations.
As always, the CHP urges everyone to make smart choices behind the wheel: Buckle up. Drive sober. Stay alert. If you plan to drink or use drugs, arrange for a safe ride home before heading out. Your safety and the safety of others depend on it.
“Let’s work together to make this Memorial Day weekend safe for all Californians,” the CHP said.