May 8, 2008
This is the park entrance where we start our Thursdays.
Today we spent a minimal amount of time catching lizards in the parking lot, and headed on down to Horseshoe Lake. Maya found a soap root lying on the hillside. This root was used by the Ohlone for brushes as well as for soap, and you can see how hairy and brush-like the bristles are naturally.
From there, we followed the mostly dry stream bed down a dry waterfall, and on down into a ravine.
It was a beautiful and mysterious trip through the woods. Every now and then slight trickle of water moistened the rocks, and there a few pools had accumulated.
There was a lot of greenery (much of it poison oak, unfortunately), lots of moss, and many beautiful ferns. Some were even growing out of the rock!
One of the pools had newts in it.
This picture is meant to show the newt's orange belly.
Climbing up and down the rocks occupied most of our day this time. We had a few minutes for quick lunch under the pines.
And that was our day!
I decided to document a few of the remaining wildflowers:
I'm not sure what this is. I didn't see too many of them.
Popcorn plant
Lupine
Blue-eyed grass
Another yellow flower I'm not sure of
Vetch
Wild iris
California buttercup
Flax
Today we spent a minimal amount of time catching lizards in the parking lot, and headed on down to Horseshoe Lake. Maya found a soap root lying on the hillside. This root was used by the Ohlone for brushes as well as for soap, and you can see how hairy and brush-like the bristles are naturally.
From there, we followed the mostly dry stream bed down a dry waterfall, and on down into a ravine.
It was a beautiful and mysterious trip through the woods. Every now and then slight trickle of water moistened the rocks, and there a few pools had accumulated.
There was a lot of greenery (much of it poison oak, unfortunately), lots of moss, and many beautiful ferns. Some were even growing out of the rock!
One of the pools had newts in it.
This picture is meant to show the newt's orange belly.
Climbing up and down the rocks occupied most of our day this time. We had a few minutes for quick lunch under the pines.
And that was our day!
I decided to document a few of the remaining wildflowers:
I'm not sure what this is. I didn't see too many of them.
Popcorn plant
Lupine
Blue-eyed grass
Another yellow flower I'm not sure of
Vetch
Wild iris
California buttercup
Flax
Labels: nature studies, skyline ridge
posted by Sarah at 6:43 PM
1 Comments:
Unknown flowers-- the first one, if it's white, might be Milkmaids (Mustard Family) the second might be Bird's-foot Deerweed (Pea Family).
The reason I'm even taking a guess at this, is because I recently down loaded a wildflower field guide for the Bay Area. Now I just need to remember to take the darn thing with me when I'm hiking.
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