pacheco
David & I went hiking today in Pacheco State Park. We took the Dinosaur Lake, Pig Pond & Spikes Peak trails to make a loop that ended up totaling about 6 miles. Due to some really crappy signage, we initially had some difficulty finding the actual Dinosaur Lake trailhead. After a few minutes of wandering aimlessly over a few hillsides, we found it. The weather was great, other than the sustained 40MPH winds which were a bit annoying at times.
I was hoping to find some wild flowers, and we were not disappointed. I'd say that they peaked, at most, a week ago, and there were tons nearly everywhere we walked. Pretty flowers were everywhere.
Early on the Dinosaur Lake trail (while it was still heading mostly east), we came across two newts that were sunning themselves. Surprisingly, neither seemed to be the least bit afraid of us, and just sat still in the morning sun. We also got some awesome views of the San Luiz Reservoir.
Eventually, the trail curved southward, and we walked through fields and fields of wildflowers everywhere.
Then we came up on the highlight of the hike for David, the Pacheco Pass windfarm. For reasons that I've never quite understood, David loves windmills alot. Back when we lived up in Dublin, we used to drive past the windfarm on the Altamount Pass of I580, and anytime we've driven out to the desert, we'd drive past the huge windfarm between Tehachapi & Mojave on CA58 (there's also a smaller windfarm along I-8 about an hour east of San Diego).
After passing out of view of the windmills, and onto the Pig Pond trail, the terrain became alot more hilly, and we spent a good chunk of time first descending into the valley with the Salt Creek, and then climbing the huge hills leading up towards the Pig Pond. There were still many wildflowers, but beyond that the terrain was mostly just rolling green hills. We did come upon this snake as we were climbing the hill heading north from the Pig Pond.
Additional pictures are up here now, and eventually they'll get moved here.
Overall it was a nice hike, and the relatively short 45 minute drive was an added bonus.