About a half of an hour north of Santa Rosa is the Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve in Guerneville. It was one of the first places I visited (thanks to Terrie) when I came up to see the area and ponder moving out west. I remember it being really quite beautiful in March. The trees are of course unfathomably tall, but my favorite part was how everything was covered with moss and lichens. This time of year is actually quite similar to March: misty, raining, and cold.

Well, poison-oak be-damned, Mark and Monica’s brother were planning on going for a hike Sunday, and I tagged along. I applied my first treatment of Calamine lotion just before heading out, but even so, all that skin movement had me itching like crazy. I’m starting to believe the healing process is going to require a lot more self-restraint than the initial allergic reaction.

I snapped this next picture looking almost straight up because I liked the contrast of the yellow leaves against the dark green pine needles. But I took the picture in motion which created an unintentionally impressionistic blur.

The East Ridge trail itself is only like a mile and change long, but it’s got a 3 mile spur that heads up into the hills, which would have added 6 or so miles to our excursion (more than we had bargained given our Sunday evening obligations). So we headed out and back to Santa Rosa, bid Monica’s brother adieu, and I suggested to Mark that we spend the remaining daylight (it was just before 4pm) over at Annadel.

Unfortunately these days the sun sets at like 5:15pm, so towards the end we were pretty much hiking in the dark, without a map. In fact we ended up at a neighboring county park, where a ranger thankfully gave us directions back to my car.