Redwood Regional Preserve, Oakland Hills

I started in Sibley Volcanic Preserve, then went through Huckleberry and Redwood (on French Trail of course) to Lake Chabot. By early evening the fog came rolling in with a vengeance and I actually got quite cold waiting for the wife to pick me up. I realized that for all the time I've spent in this park, I have very few pictures of it, although the first one below (from early morning run another day, many years ago) remains one of my favorite that I've ever taken.



I originally had some cool close-up images of fern spires here, but my wife hates spores and sporey-looking things and said she'd never read my blog again if I left those images in the post. So I just have a link (below). It's too bad because ferns are cool. They're one of the few plants that can survive on the forest floor, since redwoods are actually quite hostile to most understory plants (block out the light; constantly bombing them with material falling from the tree.) This is why they are NOT good trees to plant at your house - you're guaranteeing lots of expensive tree maintenance and/or house damage 20 years in the future. I have one at home but it's in a pot and when it's big enough I'll plant it away from buildings where it will be happy. I took this picture of the spores under a fern leaf 100% entirely to upset my wife. As you can see it worked. I am a great husband.













Originally here I had a picture of the Narcisse snake dens in Manitoba, Canada, which can now be seen here. Granted this has nothing to do with Redwood Preserve, but my wife is afraid of snakes too, and I'm an unpleasant fellow. Hence my choices.




Above: it's August, and the poison oak is red. Poison oak is worst when it's red; also, when it's every other color. Below: Poisson oak! ZING, HEY-O! Amirite? That's for you statisticians out there, thanks I'm here all week take care of your waitress. Below that, some dummies running around muttering to themselves.





The next three are from Lake Chabot, a) where I once ran a solid trail marathon that kicked off this blog, b) is the closest I've ever come to being bitten by a rattlesnake and c) where I received my hash name in days of yore my liege! Although the air quality improved dramatically this weekend as the onshore flow returned and pushed the forest fire smoke inland, in the last picture you can make out the distant smoke layer.