A Hike Along the Ridge

 

My friend Kris and I often walk or hike together in our regional parks. Dogs are allowed here, so she can bring Zoey who is a very well behaved older dog. This morning we decided to hike in Sonoma Valley Park, but instead of taking the popular shady paved path we opted for Cougar Trail up the ridge.

That trail starts right at the parking lot and meanders among trees up the hill. In October 2017 the park heavily burned in the Nuns Fire. It had been closed for weeks after that, but when we hiked there in April 2018, it was already far into its way to recovery. You can read about that here.

Most of the old trees were left in the park. They offer a great habitat for wildlife. Especially the once almost completely burned parts were now heavily populated by Acorn Woodpeckers.

Can you see the deer next to the trail?

Halfway up close to the "cranberry pond" we enjoyed the fantastic view over this area. This was the first time on our hike that Kris and I said to each other how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful place (we said that several more times this morning).

We stopped every now and then just to take in the trees and the green of the hill. That color will vanish soon when it will get warmer and there won't be anymore rain until the fall.

We hiked up to the ridge - it was warming up, but thankfully most of the trail is in the shade of the trees.

Up at the ridge the trail evens out - a very pleasant hike. Of course there are crooked trees - always a favorite photo subject of mine. Darling Zoey agreed to show her face after I told her about Nicole's Friday Face Off.

We found a bench where we stopped for a few minutes to give Zoey some water and we had a refreshing drink ourselves as well as some apple slices - and we enjoyed the view.

In this area there were a lot of dead and burnt trees. Fascinating!

I especially liked the Lace Lichen - isn't it very decorative? Beside the smaller holes, this tree had a big hole.

Of course I had to check whether anything was in there. You bet!

Some fungi that looked like dried up Turkey Tails were at the lower part of the stump and there were acorns in the holes as well.

Kris discovered this tree:

Interesting and fascinating bark:

And I couldn't help it, I had to take a photo through this tree. It was definitely calling out to me.

A week before when I was here with the park's birding group there were way more wildflowers to see. Most of them were already gone by now. We could still see a few Blue Dicks (Dipterostemom capitatus) and also some Sky Lupines (no picture).

But we saw this little guy, a California Ringlet (Coenonympha tullia california).

Eventually we stopped to eat our sandwiches and give Zoey a well deserved treat until we decided to go back the same trail and not hike down to the paved path in the valley. It was the right decision - the trail through the forest was so beautiful.

This tree seemd to give us a wink as a goodbye when we finally descended to the parking lot.

Auf der Straße nach Mendocino (On the Road to Mendocino)

 Why a German title?, you might ask. "Mendocino", the German adaptation of the song with the same name by the Sir Douglas Quintet, was a German Schlager (hit song) by Michael Holm back in 1969 and the biggest selling single that year. I was nine years old at that time, right before I started high school (high school in Germany starts with 5th grade). At that time I was still listening dominantly to German pop music, which changed a couple years later when I had learned enough English to at least understand a little bit of all the British pop music that was swapping over to the continent. But in 1969 it was German Schlager for me, and "Mendocino" was a real earworm. Of course I had never heard of a place with that name, had no idea whether a place like that actually existed and had no clue where it would be located.

Fast forward 32 years, when we moved to Santa Rosa in Northern California. On the map I saw that up north along the coast on Highway 1 there was a place called Mendocino. My childhood came back visiting - guess where we took one of our first bigger trips that summer of 2001? 

We fell in love with Mendocino right away when we first saw it sitting on the cliffs. It's a quaint little town, often shrouded in low clouds and coastal fog, with cute little shops - a wonderful independent bookshop, a fantastic optics store where many years ago I bought my binoculars and later our scope, and a delicious chocolate "Haus" among them - and a trail out to the Mendocino Headlands. Mendocino has become our annual Mother's Day trip.

You can drive up Highway 1 to get to Mendocino, but we usually opt to take Highway 128 for the trip to Mendocino (and back along 1), and so we did on this year's Mother's Day as well. After a very good breakfast in Cloverdale, we drove up into the mountains on a very winding road, trundled along the vineyards of Anderson Valley and finally dipped down into the Redwoods.

This is a favorite part of the drive for us. Driving through the forest with those towering trees is truly magnificent. See for yourself:

Of course we stopped several times. It's not just what the forest looks like, but the way it smells. I have always loved the scent of a forest.

It's not only the towering trees that capture my attention, but also what happens beneath them, on the forest floor.

But looking up to the canopy is still my favorite thing to do here.

Shortly after leaving the Redwoods we merged with Highway 1 and drove the last short stretch to Mendocino. The moment we hit the coast we experienced the typical Northern California phenomenon - sunshine everywhere, fog at the coast. In the same old fashion Mendocino appeared overcast and gray. No surprise.

What I like most about this little town beside the wonderful gardens people have here, are the many old towers, most of them watertowers. It's just a couple years ago that Mendocino was in a severe water crisis when much of the drinking water needed had to be trucked in daily. Just imagine that, sitting right next to a huge body of water.

Of course we decided to walk the Point Mendocino Trail out to the headlands. It was windy and chilly, but still we enjoyed it. 

Someone left this bouquet at the bench near the start of the trail. 

When we were in Mendocino last year the Headlands were covered with native lupines, but we were hard pressed to find any this year. Instead, the land was covered with these yellow flowers that I haven't succeeded in identifying.

But we did see some native plants like Checker Bloom (Sidalcea malviflora), Silver Lupine (Lupinus albifrons), Common Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica), Douglas Iris (Iris douglasiana), and California Sea Thrift (Armeria maritima californica).

Of course we also saw gulls, but I'm not even attempting to identify this one since I have a hard time in correct gull identification. I leave that to David who travels with birds.

I was never able to find out the story behind the Mendocino Headlands Totem Pole.

The views from anywhere on the Headlands are stunning and even more so when the sun makes an appearance. We didn't have such luck this time.

Afterwards we got our treats at the Chocolate Haus (so so good) and visited the bookshop where I found Rosanna Xia's book "California Against the Sea - Visions for our Vanishing Coastline". Ever since I had heard her talk in a webinar, I wanted to get my hands on this book. Then we slowly drove back via Highway 1, stopping in Gualala at the Seafood Shack for fish and chips as we always do, and just enjoyed this stunning drive, that always takes my breath away, no matter how often I drive here. The sun finally came out as well and let the ocean sparkle.

Here is a very short snippet of the drive, already closer to home just north of Jenner:

If you are interested to read more about Mendocino, you can find posts and photos (some even with sun!) here, here, and here. 

The Winter Forest

 

Here in coastal Northern California just an hour North of San Francisco our forests are not covered with snow in the winter. What you see is a forest of mostly deciduous trees that let the sun through. This is more than welcome in the winter, but in summer they give lovely cool shade.

Our neighboring town to the North is bordered by a lovely regional park that offers a lot of that kind of forest. Lovely trails meander through the forest and up the sometimes rather steep hills. In the photo above you can also spot a fence in the distance. This is to fence in the goats and sheep that come in to graze and thus cut down all the undergrowth. Perfect wildfire prevention.

The park was closed for quite some time because of the Kincade Fire that raced through it in the fall of 2019. Scars of that wildfire are still visible.

At the same time we saw a lot of new growth. It never stops to amaze me how nature bounces back after natural disasters.

I'm not sure what this wildflower is (if you recognize it, please let me know), but the one below is a Pacific Hound's Tongue (Cynoglossum grande). I often wonder who gives the names to plants...

Many of the trees - mostly oaks - are quite crooked and create great shadows.

We climbed up to one of the highest points of the park which was unpleasantly steep. We had to go down the same way and my knees weren't happy about it. But the view from the top was fantastic.

Over to the Coastal Range...

... and to Mount St. Helena in the Mayacamas Mountains. Mount St. Helena is one of the peaks that is covered in snow when we have those really cold (for our area) days and nights.

The park also has several canyons which is highly loved by wildfires because they can race through it fueled by wind with little chance to stop it quickly. We walked down one of those canyons along a less traveled trail from where we could see the charred trees.

But we also noticed the renewal of these trees. How very amazing!

I simply love the texture of the "fresh" tree trunks after the charred bark is gone.

We finally arrived at one of the three ponds that are creatively named after the first letters of the alphabet. This is pond B.

There's a lovely loop around the pond. On our way back to the parking lot we passed pond A where we stopped and enjoyed the quietness.

This was a lovely outing with a beautiful hike. The weather has been warm and spring like. Even for this area these temperatures are unseasonally warm and we do worry about another dry year. There is no rain in the forecast. I'm grateful that we had some decent rainfall in the fall, but it is by far not enough to get us out of the drought. I'm hoping for March which usually is a wetter month - fingers crossed!