Best Hike So Far in California

Tuesday, May 6, 2020

I hiked the Three Bridges Oak Preserve Trail today. The round trip was about five miles,  and took me to the highest point of the area.  I totally enjoyed the walk through the various habitats: riparian, meadow, oak savannah, chaparral, and madrone. You can look down at wonderful wildflowers, notice blooming shrubs, listen and look at birds, and find butterflies and bees. And you can look out over a good part of the county. While this area has been somewhat invaded by non natives, it also had a diverse collection of native forbs, grasses, shrubs and trees, making for an interesting, as well as beautiful stroll. 

I can never get a perfect picture of California poppies - but I keep trying - these were at the trailhead

 The trail goes under the main highway and then, almost immediately crosses a creek. This is the piece of the trail one is to use when water is in the creek.  I tried the other crossing on the way back and decided the water was too high at the beginning so used this route both times.

Atascardero Creek

I definitely got in a lot of tree bathing and feel so much better

You MUST know your poison oak - warning signs were at the beginning of the trail

I forgot my camera - and took this small flower with my phone. I thought I had seen one bug
but got the entire family - skypilot (Polemonium eximium)

One of the native larkspurs

Chinese Houses (Collinsia heterophylla)

Hummingbird sage - one of my new favorites

There were a few spring flowers still blooming

I was soon in the oak savannah, and seeing coastal live oak, canyon live oak, and the most mystical of all, blue oak

The very common sticky monkey flower 

The trees were awesome - and here I heard both wild turkeys and a domestic rooster,
 as well as California quail and songbirds

Not sure what this was

This little family was going down the MANY switchbacks - the little boy was saying he likes going down best

Had many beds of these Chinese Houses (Collinsia heterophylla)

There was lots of pitcher sage but I only saw honey bees using it

Flowers and trail

Golden yarrow (Eriophyllum confertiflorum) closeup

Unknown plant 1 - please comment if you know it - 

Unknown plant 2 

New leaves

Wooly Bluecurls (Trichostema lanatum)

This looked all dainty and merry - with red stems and green leaves until I looked a little closer

Could this be the last switchback - nope - had over a mile to go

The chaparral started about two thirds of the way up.  A lot of birds were using that area. And I found many different kinds of blooming or berrying shrubs.

This pitcher sage was too pretty to leave out

Purple Nightshade (Solanum xanti)

California everlasting (Pseudognaphalium californicum)

This is a syrphid fly on blue Dicks (Dichelostemma capitatum)

The remains of a flower and the fruit  it made this look like a cartoon insect face to me

Blue oak

There was lots of miners lettuce in the lower parts of the trail

Nature's garden

At the beginning of the Madrone forest

A tiny wood fern

The madrones were almost finished blooming... 

...And were putting on new growth...

... but were still attractive to insects

I finally made it to the top after climbing too many switchbacks to count

This garter snake was sunning at the edge of the trail and didn't worry about me taking its picture

There were lots of butterflies on the way down but I couldn't capture them with my phone camera

The bottom trail is circular so this was a new view

Back to the creek - I took this looking up stream from the where the trail meets the creek when you start-
you wade upstream to where that little indention is on top right when the creek is dry