8/8/14

Vichy Springs

We went to Ukiah... a few weeks ago. Here are some pictures? It was hot.

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The poison oak has turned red in all my usual hiking haunts.

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People on Instagram (@chuck_b) thought that log was a hole. Ridiculous! It's a log.

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To beat the heat, there was evening hiking and morning hiking. This is all from evening hiking.

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I did not really beat the heat by hiking in the evening. I was a sweaty mess.

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Now, it's morning hiking, and this was much more civilized.

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The cattails indicate the creek.

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I don't know if you know this, but we're having a terrible drought.

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I mean, it does not really seem that terrible to me. The one we had in the 1970s, when I was a wee one, seemed much worse. But then I was wee, and so impressionable.

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For whatever reason, I'm just not feeling this drought. Ukiah is geo-hydro-thermally active. That's probably not a word. Anyway, mineral springs abound.

Poison oak, so pretty.

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The buckeyes, doing their drought avoidance thing by dropping leaves in mid-summer.

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I neglected to show you pictures of the buckeye flowers in my backyard. I am a terrible blogger. Next year? Right now, I can only go forward.

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I fret a lot about the animals who don't have much water this year.

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I'm sure the drought is real to them.

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Do you fret about the animals?

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I fret emotionally. Intellectually, I'm okay with it.

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The normally deep creek that previously I have never been able to cross (well, we mostly come here in winter) was shallow and spotty.

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Any given segment was full of fish, frogs, and lots of bugs.

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The waterfall at the end was a trickle (why was there any water at all), and the pond beneath looked rather stagnant.

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'Tis the season.

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We soldier on.

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