He has always talked about this particular wildlife preserve, but I had actually never gone with him yet. Santa Rosa Plateau is what it sounds like, it's a semi-flat preserve with rolling hills, prairie type grass, and spots of large oak trees here and there. We picked a great time of year to go because spring is fast approaching and there were tons of wildflowers blooming and wildlife thriving. One neat feature of Santa Rosa is the vernal pools. These pools are very shallow waterbeds that span several hundred yards across the bunch-grass. When they are full of water, there are small boardwalks that are open for hikers to walk across. Unfortunately, the vernal pools were dried up during our trip thanks to the heat wave we had this past week. However, there were so many other new and wonderful things to enjoy, that we didn't miss the pools much. We even walked to this old farm where an adobe still stands from 1855. It was open thanks to a ranger patrolling the area, so we were allowed to go inside and peek around. Another very interesting aspect of this hike that I had never known about woodpeckers before is seen in this picture:
So the woodpeckers make tons of tiny holes in the oak trees, find dozens of acorns, stick the acorns into the holes, and come back later to find the acorn. The most interesting part to this survival tactic is that they not only get the acorn, but also the beetle who had begun to eat the acorn from inside the tree. Wow! God's creations never cease to amaze me!
Here is one type of wildflower we saw:
Here is a good picture of the old oak trees:
These are a few larger shots of the specific area we were hiking in:
By the way, all of these pictures were taken by Kevin. He has turned out to be quite the photographer, which I don't think a lot of people know. He has a unique perspective on most of the shots he takes; he sees what other people may not see. Plus, our camera is nothing spectacular. It's a simple 12 megapixel flat digital camera. But he does so much with it! So here are a few of his great shots from our trip that I want to show off:
All in all, this turned out to be a beautiful and enjoyable morning outing for me and my outdoors-loving husband. :)
