It's been chilly lately--below freezing nights and with light snow sticking to the ground... it's been nice to have a reprieve from the mud, as the mud is frozen again, making nice surfaces to run on. The copious puddles have not refrozen, though, and lightly dusted with snow they make for bad surprises! I managed to dunk both my feet yesterday.
This morning, the tree-covered hills were shrouded in fog, and looking like that, they reminded me of the hills on the San Francisco peninsula. I used to love hiking to the top of Windy Hill in Winter and enjoy the view to the West--row after row of rolling green hills until I could see (on days when the fog was less thick) the ocean shimmering in the distance. To the North, where the San Bruno Mountains take a slight dip, I could watch the fog rise up over the ridgeline and roll down into the Bay side, gently tumbling and creating giant rolls as it went. I strongly encourage my Bay Area readers to try this hike in late Fall! It's awesome! (But be careful to bring lots of water if you go in Summer, because the hike is hot and has little cover, and dress for a wide range of weather no matter what time of year you go, because the change in temperature from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill can be 20-30 degrees F! It's amazing that you can get such a range of microclimates on a little 2000-foot hill and in an hour's hike from bottom to top! But I digress...)
The hills today reminded me of that, except that the fog was stationary and there was no ocean on the other side (although I could pretend there was!).
3 comments:
If the Windy Hill can speak, it might miss you too
Haven't done that hike yet. Maybe I will take the kiddos one of these days. How's the poison oak - Alan's good about staying on the trail, but Rika is not. And it's no fun to stay in the stroller the whole time!
Do you guys get poison oak/ivy up north? Swamp cabbage? Stinging nettle? I've heard some very good things about eating nettles but haven't tried them.
We have no poison oak, poison ivy, fleas, ticks, or snakes.
What we have instead are man-eating mosquitos.
And bears instead of mountain lions.
And blueberries instead of blackberries. :)
Windy hill's trails are maintained quite well... No poison oak on the main trail (the exposed one), very little under the trail that stays under the trees. :)
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