Scenes from a walk a few days ago.
Tag Archives: pine trees
Before we left on our October road trip, Mary learned about the rare foxtail pine trees that are found in the southern Sierra mountains. They can live for over 2000 years! There is another subspecies that lives in the Klamath range in northern California. She found a location not far from where we were camping and made a GPS route on her phone for us to follow to find these unusual trees. We drove up a long (paved) road high in the mountains and once again we were around 10,000 feet! From there we had to drop down a steep road bank and then cross a meadow with a lovely meandering stream and then climb the steep ridge on the other side. The ridge was made up of pumice-like ground up granite and boulders. Not great walking, for sure. As we started up it, we commented on the lodgepole pines – so different from the lodgepoles in the Cascades and Rockies. Instead of being skinny trees growing in dense forests, these were open grown and large and had some character to them. I turned around and I saw a tree with much different bark! There it was! The elusive foxtail pine! We had barely climbed the ridge at all! As we looked some more, we could see they were everywhere! We continued to walk higher and higher, seeing more foxtails and fewer lodgepoles. After we’d had our fill, we returned to the meadow and then back up to the road where we found there were foxtails everywhere! We had been so determined to get to our starting point that we had not even looked around! It was a great adventure.
Our favorite dog walking trail has been off limits for months to protect nesting Sandhill Cranes. It was their second attempt to nest there. Last year, predators got their colts. A baby Sandhill Crane is called a colt and it is orange! This year, they lost one to a coyote but the other survived and the three of them have moved on. It is great news to have cranes nesting in our valley.
The girls were happy to get back to the wide flat trail through the woods, to the river. Luna can no longer negotiate steeper, rough trails, even with her braces. The braces give her good support and she gets along ok but not for far. Her back legs are growing weaker with the laryngeal paralysis and the braces are relatively heavy but they support her damaged Achilles tendons. It’s hard to get old. She still has an optimistic attitude most days and really WANTS to be her old self.
This was earlier in the month after we’d had a bit of rain. Lately we’ve had endless sunny, dry days.
What do you see here?
We did takeout Saturday night, getting Pizza at East 20 and drove a little ways out of town to sit by a creek under the pine trees to eat it. Sorry, there are no pictures of the pizza. You just have to believe me that it was good. We walked down to the river and Sky enjoyed jumping in the water a few times. She has had an injured shoulder for weeks now and rarely gets any play time. It is frustrating for all of us. Yesterday she limped more so I guess it was a bad idea but she was SO happy.
My Everyday Photos 