Another Wildflower Hike

I've moved since the last time I posted. I now live in this cute, quiet little green house in the forest, on the compound. My truck is parked and spends most of its time acting as a reflecting-board for sunsets, when it's not driving me home to see Jack. And in the house, a fair amount of the time, is Jax, the lovable chocolate lab/Australian shepherd mix that one of my housemates got approved to stay with us for the summer.

I had one weekend to myself to go hiking and I took full advantage. I bandit camped off Fence Creek Road and hiked to Wheats Meadow and back. It was absolutely lovely out there. I wouldn't mind spending a week just hiking around the greater region of that valley. The terrain was so inviting, the creeks slow and clear - they reminded me of the creek behind my grandparents' house that I used to play in as a kid. Anyhow, lots of photos will follow the written section of this post to show those adventures.

My parents came out to visit - no photos of that yet as they took most of them! But it was a great time all-around. They came up to see the Pinecrest area for a quick overnight, then drove up to our place in Westwood. Together we explored the area, renting bikes and going down the Bizz Johnson Trail. It was a beautiful, mostly-downhill, 26 miles from Westwood to Susanville that I would gladly ride again. We also drove around Lake Almanor and explored that, and I showed them our local reservoir over here. I had to go back to work, so Jack sent them off the next day with recommendations for Lassen National Park, where I think they spent the entire day until supper time!

The best news right now is that I got my days off changed for work, so now I am off on Thursdays and Fridays, which means I have a day off in common with Jack, PLUS I don't have to go into work until 12:30 on Saturdays (for now at least), so I don't have to leave until Saturday morning. That means I get 3 nights and 2 days at home if I come home on a weekend. Which will probably happen a bit more often in the next 6 weeks, since I have until the end of programs to keep coming into work late on Saturdays.

Summer is going by fast! I'm still loving my job, and hoping that I'll have time between school and visits home to actually explore the place I'm working in. I figure I should take advantage of the good schedule for the next several weeks, though, and come home, because it will change once programs stop and then it will also be less busy so I can explore with more solitude.

Also, I am saving up to rent a llama for a backpacking trip. It's a summer goal. $70/day and you can have a shaggy friend carry your bag for you while you traverse through the mountains... I can hardly wait!

Until next time!

Campsite Photos:

On the Wheats Meadow Trail:

Applegate's Paintbrush, yarrow, and juniper berries

Yarrow leaf - this stuff smells beautiful and is a deterrent to mosquitos!

Torrey's Monkeyflower (or some other variety), and the little ellow flowers are likely Muir's Ivesia (or some other variety)... I think...

Looking at the Dardanelles - volcanic geology at its finest

Some more Dardanelles in the distance

Wandering Daisy

Thimbleberry Flowers - my favorite berry of all time!

Corn Lily

White-veined Wintergreen - I rarely see this with flowers on it

Most likely some variety of Gilia 

Duck pond... couldn't snag a picture of them, but there was a whole family of ducks here. They all hid in the rushes as soon as I came up, and even when I tried to sneak back up there on the way back they were gone.

Remnants of an old fence or gate?

Western Bistort

Wheats Meadow!!

Wheats Meadow Creek... I could've crossed it, but I didn't feel like taking my boots off.

Subalpine Larkspur

Duck pond and Dardanelle 

Smaller meadow along the trail

 

Mountain Spiraea

Little pink wildflower carpet in the degenerated granite.

Mystery flower - perhaps it was a young willow or something, but I honestly have no idea. Couldn't find anything like it in my book.

Checker bloom - this might be a new favorite!

Lemmon's Catchfly, getting a visit from a bumblebee... sorry it's so blurry.

Stepping stones across Dardanelles Creek

Another pond along the trail

If I could only have found the last piece to this puzzle, I probably would've brought it home...  nuts!

Roadside waterfall!

Struck by Beauty

Is it possible to forget how beautiful a place is?

 Driving over Sonora Pass, the heater blasting to keep my little engine that could nice and cool, I didn't think that I was gonna want to drive this route again. Until I started the descent and found myself looking at a vast expanse of rolling hills and sandy-colored mountains, the scents of sage and rabbitbrush swirling in and out of my open windows. I found myself facing a landscape that made my heart sing with the beauty that quickens the soul. It was a feeling akin to the one I felt atop the Red Mountain Fire Lookout, except that this was coupled with a distinctive sense that I was looking at my home.

 When I reached the Highway 395 I was practically giddy. Following the contours of the Walker River, so familiar with where I needed to downshift, which corners I could take faster than the others, which hills would require me to downshift, where the turnouts were so I could get out of everybody else's way while I soaked in the beauty and the scents and the feeling of home.

 North of Reno, I started to enter the less familiar Northeastern Sierra. The hills and mountains alike seem less dramatic, more rolling and inviting, yet just as beautiful. Lenticular clouds dotted all over the sky like UFOs. I had to wonder if maybe a good number of sightings were people unfamiliar with the clouds seeing them under-lit by city lights or some similar effect.

If you want to see the better sunset, sometimes you have to look east. I discovered this last summer, and I saw it played out in vivid color on my drive home. My camera doesn't do it justice, but all the pinks were so much deeper than they seem in this photo.

It feels good to be home, even if for a short visit. It feels good to know that this area is my home, full of beauty, with my husband and our little house, our quirky first-year garden and the cute little towns to explore. I finally feel like we're in the right place.

Here's to the Wanderhope.

Until next time!

Spring in the Mountains

It's been mercifully cool. The snow is thick in the lower portions of the high country. I am content to pedal my bike up roads closed to cars until their upper portions are deemed free of snow and downed trees are logged out for the summer. I survived my first busy holiday weekend, and I am pleased to say that I haven't yet settled on a singular question that gets asked too often. I think it a good sign. Perhaps it's just the questions of when roads will open, but you can hardly fault someone for asking that, it is an unusual snow year after so many easy winters. 

I went for my first hike of the season yesterday - around Pinecrest Lake, and up and down the spur trail for Cleo's Bath. Or is it Clio's? No matter. It isn't very bath-like at the moment, but I could see under the raging river how it would make a most excellent swimming hole... perhaps I'll return there in late August and see what it looks like. That trail was much more of a scramble than I anticipated and definitely tried me out. Overall, the roughly 6 miles took me 3 hours, and I felt like I was trying hard. I suppose I'm a bit more out of shape than I expected, and perhaps still adjusting to the altitude somewhat (though that should be straightened out by now). Of course, I did hit the trail after a day of work, so that may also account for some of my lackadaisical pace. Afterwards, I changed into my swimsuit and waded out into the lake. I let my knees and feet soak for at least fifteen or twenty minutes before jumping in and rinsing the sweat off the rest of my body. The water was cold, especially since it was evening and cloudy. 

The housing is so-so. A nice, modern building with few problems, but not surrounded by nature, no picnic tables to invite outdoor hangouts, and in response to my saying that I don't drink much, one of the guys turned to the other and said "I'll get her going" as if I was a windup toy that they were going to pull the string and watch me go. Disgusting. On top of that, it's a 10-mile drive to my work each day, and 10 miles back. They put us down here because we were supposed to work at the ranger station just a few more miles down the hill, but when we got here they said maybe that'll only happen sometimes, and then yesterday they said it won't happen at all. So all told I'm considering making a request to move to the housing up the mountain. Either the Pinecrest, where I will be able to walk to work, or the Strawberry, where I will be right next to the Stanislaus River and able to fish or swim as I like once the water levels go down later in the season. The only real bonus to being here, as far as I can tell, is that I have limited cell service in the parking lot, and I am only a short drive or ride down the hill to the nearest reliable wi-fi. This will be handy next week when I start school, but aside from that, and the slightly higher rent (which would be balanced out by not having to drive?), I don't see why I couldn't be happier up the hill. 

But enough musing, it's time for pictures! I apologize for the lack of quality, I apparently had adjusted my camera to low-quality for some reason awhile back and didn't think to check the settings before I got going. I only figured it out once I got on the computer, so these are all small and you can't really zoom in or they just get blurry. But I have over a dozen different wildflowers, most of which I'm fairly certain of the identity and a few which I'm questioning. If anyone else knows, feel free to clue me in.

Pinecrest Lake from the dam site

California Broom (?) Or else it looks like some sort of mallow, but I wasn't sure on this one.

Applegate's Paintbrush and Mountain Misery

Bumblebee on a Blue Dicks flower

Western Sagebrush Lizard (?) and California King Snake

Hartweg's Iris - my first time coming across one of these as far as I can remember!

This one is a mystery - I'm thinking either Lobb's Nama or Jacob's Ladder... anybody else have a guess?

Harlequin Lupine

Mountain Pride - one of my favorites

More lake views

The CCC marked this trail with arrows spray-prainted on the granite

Gooseberries!

These little guys are Whisker Brush <3 td="">

Young leaves on a California Black Oak (or some other variety... they intermingle a lot)

Cleo's Bath

Granite Gilia 

Mountain Jewelflower - this was another first! It looks like a miner's lettuce that forgot to stop growing...

Slender Cinquefoil - we had cinquefoil growing throughout our lawn in Crescent City, but I never did see it bloom

Some captured snowmelt (I'm guessing) made a nice reflecting pool above the lake

Another lake view

Sierra Currant and Common Scouring Brush

False Solomon's Seal

This was another new one, but I think it's a Golden Brodiaea, also called "Pretty Face".

I thought this was my favorite, California Hesperochiron... but now that I look closely I don't know what to make of those blue lines... perhaps it's an Alpine Gentian? or a Baby Blue Eyes? I need to look into that...

Sierra Currant flowers

Until next time!