First Wildflower Hike of the Season

One of the hiking groups I follow online mentioned a hike at Mt. Diablo that is good for wildflowers, so I immediately tried to figure out who I could get to go with me to check this out.

And I'm so glad that I have a friend who may not love the steep hikes, but is willing to do it with me so I can see flowers. It was almost 7 miles with 3 miles of pretty steady climb (1900 feet), but we lucked out with a beautiful day after a really hot week. There was a nice breeze and some hazy clouds that kept it from feeling too hot, even towards the end of the hike when it was warmer.

And we found a lot of flowers!

We probably saw at least 2 dozen different types of flowers, and some great patches along the trail.

The hills are still green, even though it won't last much longer because of the lack of rain this year and the extreme temperatures. We've had record breaking highs, in the low 90s, for the last week of "winter" and not much rain in the forecast, so we are quickly headed to summer conditions in the hills, which is going to mean it's time to switch to redwood and coastal hikes. We're pretty lucky to have good hiking year-round, just have to choose the right locations.

Point Reyes, Finally!

It's been awhile since we've been out in the van, and an overnight to Point Reyes was the perfect way to get back to it! We've been trying to get out here to explore for years, and things keep coming up when we plan to go, but this time, we made it. 

We found a gorgeous spot along Tomales Bay to spend the night and then we were right there for a day of exploring. This view when we woke up was pretty awesome.

We were pretty tired by the time we got to our spot for the night, but I did spend a few minutes checking out what UV fluorescence we had going on and found these little flowers. I love how the UV colors are like guides directly to the glowing pollen. Helpful if you're a pollinator!

I took a picture in the morning to see what they looked like normally. Not quite as magical, and now when I see flowers, I'm trying to imagine how they'd light up under the uv light.

Once we got into the park, we drove to the farthest point near Chimney Rock to see the elephant seals that are there for pupping season. We found a colony that included this large bull (the one with the pink neck scars). He ended up getting in the water and swimming around, while most of them were just sun bathing while we were there.

The beach along that bay is gorgeous!

We walked down to the old Life-saving Service Station where they launched rescue boats to go out to the shipwrecks along the coast before the Coast Guard became a thing, and found a mama elephant seal who came up on the beach to say hi when we were talking to her.

Next stop was at the other side of that point, where we found a more rugged coastline.

The water was so turquoise! 

And we found a bunch of sea lions,

and harbor seals here. It's fun to get to see three marine mammals in one area. Some hikers we saw mentioned seeing a whale in the bay where we were watching elephant seals, but we never saw it.

We walked farther out the point and got a great view of the miles of sandy beach along this part of the park.

And then, hiked down to the light house.

I can't imagine living in such a remote place when communication and travel were both more difficult.

But the light is beautifully restored and you can't beat the views.

When the winds get over 40 mph, they have to close down the light house access which happens fairly often, so we lucked out with the weather.

It was perfect weather!

And then, we got to climb 313 steps back up to the visitor's center.

We made lunch there (grilled cheese and tomato soup) and then drove back out to the inland part of the park to do a little hiking.

Along the drive back, we found one of the resident tule elk herds. (Not a great picture, but the best I could manage with my phone through my bird scope.)

We stopped at the Bear Valley Visitor's Center and saw this incredible display of nudibranch art. The woman who created all of these decided to take a marine biology class after she retired and ended up going down a whole rabbit trail of handicraft science art. Some are knitted, some felted, others sewn--they are beautiful and amazingly accurate. We've found a few of these in the tidepools, but there are still a lot more to see someday.

Then we went for a 3 mile hike along Bear Valley trail

to the Divide Meadow. We didn't have time to hike all the way to the beach (or any desire to do an 8+ mile hike at that point in the day), 

but it was a pretty trail along a creek and the meadow was very peaceful.

We stopped for a while. I found a baby garter snake under a log (to add to our animals sighted list.)

On the way back, we saw the one and only banana slug for the day. We had been wondering if they had them there.

It's still a little early in the wildflower season, but we found a trillium,

and a bunch of the Douglas Irises along the meadow.

And the final mammal spotting were more black-tailed deer. We'd seen quite a few all day, and the ranger we talked with at this visitor's center said they're like fleas--they are everywhere. They weren't very scared of us at all.

This park is beautiful and I'd love to come back for some bird watching next time. We found a few today, but over half of all bird species in the US have been seen here at some point, largely because it's along the Pacific Flyway migration path. There's a good chance of seeing new birds in the spring and fall with how many stop by, including some who get a little off path. That will be for next year!

Lots of Random Goings On

After such a dry Jan/Feb, we finally got some rain halfway through this month, and it was lovely to see everything wet and fresh.

The almond blossoms have been beautiful. It's fun that we have a park so close to us with a lot of trees to enjoy this time of year. Our homeschool park group has been there this month and I went a couple of times without any kids, just to catch up with friends.

Peanut had a fun 4-H meeting. We haven't made it to any of the project groups he was hoping to do this year, but at least he can go to the club meetings once a month and have fun seeing friends.

And now, in an effort to be a lifelong learner, my fun find this month:

UV flourescence! I watched a lunchtime zoom seminar one day on bioluminescence and UV fluorescence that we can find all around the Bay Area and was so excited to go out and see what we could find, so I got a new UV light (I have a couple of cheap ones I've used in my science classes, but turns out the better ones have a different wave length, and it makes a huge difference.)

And we took the light out to explore one of the redwood parks in Oakland at dusk. We only found the one group of mushrooms (Sulfur tufts) and these little flowers, but a lot of mushrooms and flowers will do this.

The moss on the redwood bark was pretty cool. Redwoods are a lot redder under UV light.

And a lot of plants will glow red--it's the chlorophyll in the leaves. I have no idea what the blue parts are--I still have a lot to learn about this.

Redwood sorrel, which looks very green during the day, is a deep red under UV light. It was so much fun looking for things and realizing how different the world looks if you change the lens you're seeing it through. I've been reading a book--An Immense World, by Ed Yong that explores this concept, too. Living things have very different umwelts, specific ways that an organism experiences the world based on the capabilities of their sensory organs. It's fun when we can get a glimpse into another species umwelt.

All that rain finally got the creek going again. It's already slowed and largely dried up, but it had a few days with a lot of water.

Peanut and I went to the Science Odessey night at one of the local K-8th schools so I could see which community groups had booths there (getting ideas of who to reach out to for my science fair I'm doing in April), and one company had a couple of snakes there. They do research and analysis for a lot of organizations, including East Bay Regional Parks, working with endangered and threatened species.

And then, the next day, I had a nature hike scheduled at Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve. It's fun that we have an extinct volcano right in the Bay Area, even if the area has been crumpled so the volcano is lying on it's side now and doesn't look anything like a volcano. But there are some cool volcanic rocks to see in the area.

And there were a lot of these butterflies--California Tortoiseshells, I think.

And the real find of the day was about a dozen newts in a small pond on the hike. They were actively mating and laying eggs. We found this one that looks like it's curled around several large clusters of eggs. I've only seen eggs one other time and they were just attached on the side of a rock, but I'm guessing these were laid very recently.

This was by far the favorite stop for everyone on the hike. The kids also found a couple of young bull frogs, and had fun exploring the labyrinth that was right by the pond. I seriously love my job.

Our weather has been unseasonably warm this past week after the rain storms, so while we were working in the backyard on Saturday, I got the animals out for a bit. Our sweet girl, Charkie, just turned 6 years old this past week. Never would have guessed that she'd outlast the other guinea pigs, but here she is, the oldest one we've ever raised.

Luckily she's still around to keep Poppy company. Not sure what we'll do when the bunny is the only one left--I think she's going to be lonely.

We got to finish the day off with an evening in Palo Alto, getting pizza as a snack before watching San Francisco, a 1940's musical, at the Stanford Theater. I'd seen the movie back in college, but it was fun to watch again. And then we got crepes afterwards. 5:30 movie times are awkward for dinner, haha, so we kind of did a split meal with popcorn in between. It had been a few months since we'd been to this theater--it's seriously my favorite.