Spring

 1/4- Napa CA

   We put on our hiking shoes today. Alayne picked this campground because it had hiking right from the campground. I have been driving past all these grass covered hills that were speckled with trees and I always wondered what it would be like to climb one. Today I got my chance. 

    Well the damn things are steeper than they look. We huffed and puffed our way up the first little one and then walked a ways on a ridge top. The trail is all loose rocks interspersed with mud. The ground around here doesn’t soak up water real fast so everything was wet and muddy. We did see a bunch of wildlife but nothing we couldn’t have seen in my front yard at home. The view from the top was worth it though. We could see all the way down (or up) the Napa Valley and in the other direction we could have seen San Francisco if it hadn’t been mired in fog. 

    On our way down I was noticing that a lot of the trees are getting into spring mode. Some of the shrubs are flowering hard now and the trees are budding up. We even saw daffodils and lots of Calla lilies. We are not even a week into January and the grass is a bright spring time green already. I guess once the sun turns that corner these plants are raring to go. They probably have to because by the time summer rolls around it’s too hot to exist. 

   We move again tomorrow as we head back to Chico for an extended stay. We go back to some high speed highway driving. 

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