We went hiking the other day in Joaquin Miller Park in the Oakland hills. We had been there before, but the park is so large, we decided to go to another entrance, which ended up being a completely different experience due to the park’s size.
We have a big rainstorm hitting California at the moment, but we managed to get a hike in, in between the rain. The Bay Area fog did roll in though, which made it really COLD. Now, I do realize that it wasn’t actually cold compared to other places, but sitting around having a picnic before the hike at 39 degrees felt pretty frosty 🥶.
While hiking, we stumbled upon some reddish orange mushrooms that were pretty cool. There is nothing like moisture and decaying plant matter to spawn mushrooms! I think they are Red Russula mushrooms, but I’m definitely not a mushroom expert. Probably quite poisonous, judging by that they were still there and not collected by someone already. Apparently most red mushrooms are poisonous. We also came across some version of turkey tail mushrooms, which are always cool to see.
Hiking in the foggy redwoods was also a pretty awesome experience. I think redwoods are my favorite kind of tree, with Japanese maples being my second. Redwood trees are definitely an entity and walking in between them, you can feel their presence. These redwoods are second or third generation, as the first was logged for building materials for San Francisco over 100 years ago. So they are big, but not that big when it comes to redwoods.
There is a small grove of untouched redwoods at Henry Cowell State park in the Santa Cruz mountains. There is a tree there that is about 277 feet tall and around 1,500 years old. Can you imagine, with this being the year 2023, this tree started growing in the year 500? Just to give you an idea how large it is, it’s so wide, that it takes 16 adults hand to hand to hug the tree. And this one is still not as big as the trees near Yosemite or in Humboldt up north. They are quite something to see in person. Thinking about my previous post on gifts, these trees are a gift by just being.
And of course, Yukon thought it was the best day ever, that boy loves to hike 😊.
Carrots Over Cancer 
Nice post and pictures! Your gift post was a good read too.
I really enjoyed the magnolia trees when they were in bloom at the sf botanical gardens last year, along with the ginkgo trees. Maybe you can come out to see them this year?
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