Sauntering at a Seasonal Lake

Last week I joined Senior Saunters again (I wrote about them here); this time we went to Tolay Lake Regional Park. This is a park that has been open to the public for about ten years now; before that it was only open for the fall festival on two weekends in October of every year, but otherwise the public didn't have access. I have to admit that I hadn't been there since the opening to the public because it is a bit of a trek there. But this time, two friends of mine, who hadn't been there either, and I carpooled down there.

First of all, there was no lake, despite its name. Well, let me rephrase that, there was no lake now. It's a seasonal lake, the season being winter of course, but since we had such a dry March without a single day of rain, the lake was mostly gone. It was still pretty "marshy" and there were a few "canals", but that was pretty much it. However, I think if you're there early in the morning you will see a lot of birds. We saw mainly Red-winged Blackbirds and Violet-green Swallows.

And guess what? There were also dead trees - hurray!

We sauntered along this trail. It's a lovely park, but it almost completely lacks any shade. Last week was perfect weather for our walk, on the cooler side with a rather chilly wind.

There was a lot of teasel by the side of the trail. I love teasel and I couldn't help it, I took tons of pictures of it.

The trees in the background I found rather attractive. I love solitary trees.

We had just passed them and were walking a little bit farther when we saw at the foot of the hill two coyotes. They were too far away for taking pictures, and we simply enjoyed standing there and watching them until they slowly moved away. They certainly weren't in any rush. This was the second time this year that we saw coyotes during our sauntering.

Eventually, we turned around and walked back to the parking lot. I noticed the cows looking for shade under the tree to the left. I hadn't seen them when we came up that way. There are some parks in our county where cows are grazing - another way of wildfire mitigation. They're not quite as ferocious eaters as goats who, beside sheep, are also kept in the parks and other wooded areas for the same purpose.

Walk with a Coyote

 

About a year ago I joined the Senior Saunters, a group that gets together once a month to walk (well, saunter) in one of our many regional parks. It's organized by Sonoma County Regional Parks and it's a free program. Our guide is Alexis, a young, energetic parks employee who clearly enjoys being with us "oldies" and who is a wonderful resource of knowledge about everything connected with our parks. The size of the group varies every time, but there is a core of people who always join in the saunters. We not only enjoy the environment where we walk, but we also have a lot of fun together.

Last week we met at the lake, but Alexis didn't want to walk around the lake but led us up the hill away from the lake. We stopped at the Discovery Center and enjoyed the view down to the lake. You almost can't see it!

We eventually arrived at this meadow with two vernal pools. This area is a bit of a "no man's land" since it's right on the border between the regional park and the adjacent state park. Employees of both parks take care of this area.

This morning Alexis spoke about newts. She did it with a lot of humour, which I like, and always has a matching story to tell. Then she took us to the vernal pools and told us to look for newt eggs and tiny newts. We were quite taken with this, discovered the eggs, saw some newts, until someone shouted "there's a coyote!".

No one was looking for newts anymore, everyone was mesmerized by this beautiful guy who wasn't afraid of us at all (we were a group of about 25). He - or she? - took his sweet time to cross the meadow to eventually disappear in the woods nearby.

What a wonderful encounter!

This certainly made my day.

We had a couple more great views of the lake. It looks so much bigger from up here.

We saw some beautiful mushrooms - I think these are Spring Fieldcap (Agrocybe praecox)

I was very excited to see the first wildflowers. Henderson's Shooting Star (Primula hendersonii) is enchanting.

I tried to figure out what kind of fungi had settled on this branch. I'm not sure, but to me some of them look like dried up Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor). 

A last view down to the lake before we entered the Discovery Center and finally said our goodbyes.