This tree (whose species eludes me, but I think it is a maple) glowed in the afternoon sun.
Rex was visiting from suburban Virginia, where there are not many places to go hiking, so a hike was in order. We went to Redwood Regional Park in the Oakland hills, a small park but lovely and wild. Redwood groves fill the lower reaches of the valley, and graceful bay trees arch over the streams. The upper slopes of the hills are covered with chaparral, madrone, oaks, and Monterey pine. We traversed the length of the park and back again (about nine miles total), and had quite a few adventures along the way! My camera's batteries were low, so I couldn't take many pictures, but here are the ones I got.
Pictures are already full-size, but you can click on a picture to see it separately.
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This tree (whose species eludes me, but I think it is a maple) glowed in the afternoon sun.
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Rex hiking along Creek Trail, beneath the namesake redwoods. The whole area was logged about a hundred years ago, so these trees are not as big as the old-growth redwoods would have been.
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These are some pretty tall trees, though!
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Rex said this path reminded him of how the Shire, in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, ought to look.
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It was plum season, and wild plums were everywhere. On the upper reaches of Creek Trail we had to stop every few hundred feet to pick more plums. Some of them were not worth braving the poison oak for. But some of them were very good!
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Since Rex is taller than me, the job of plum-harvesting fell to him. I got to pick the trailside blackberries instead. Between the blackberries and the plums, we got a proper meal (well, dessert anyway) on the hike.
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On the way back, we took the French Trail, apparently named because it has as many ups and downs as the Alps section of the Tour de France. Here, Rex practices his balancing skills on a fallen redwood trunk that was suspended just above the path. (The photo is blurry because dusk is falling).
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And, the very next day, it was the Fourth of July. Here are a few photos from our Fourth of July activities:
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Rex and Astroboy and me. We're at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco to see a special exhibit on Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astroboy. Astroboy was a central part of our early childhood!
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We went to the Berkeley Marina to watch the fireworks, and brought a picnic. Here are Rex and Jeremy unpacking the picnic (we are rather starving, having just walked for forty minutes to get there). If you look closely you can see Scrabble in the background, but we were too busy eating to play Scrabble.
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As dusk fell, many sailboats sailed out of the marina so that they could get a close-up view of the fireworks. The fireworks were lovely, but I never have any luck taking photos of fireworks, so you'll just have to imagine what they looked like!
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Last updated July 13, 2007.