Butano State Park has been mostly closed since the big fire in 2020. The upper fire roads were recently opened, so I took a jaunt up there to have a look. I did an 11-mile, 2,000 foot elevation gain loop. I planned to do a run/walk, but it turned into mostly walking at a brisk pace, with some stops for wildflower photos.
Blog
Sporadic dispatches from the hinterlands.
Half Moon Bay Wildflowers
On the way home from SFO, I headed down the coast and made a stop at Half Moon Bay. It’s June, but there are still a lot of wildflowers out. I snapped some phone pictures to help me identify (and maybe remember) the species.
For plant ID, I used this handy book:
Plants and Plant Communities of the San Mateo Coast by Avis Boutell, Toni Corelli, and Nancy Frost, published by the Coastside State Parks Association.
Titmouse
This season we have an Oak Titmouse family nesting in the birdhouse outside our bedroom.
For the past couple of years, the house has been used by Chickadees, so it’s been interesting to compare. The titmice were very quiet at first. We saw them investigating the house in early Spring, but then we didn’t see them for a while. Eventually we realized they were nesting in stealth mode, zooming in and out of the house at incredible speed, and avoiding singing near their home. Now it looks like the chicks are getting ready to fledge, and the adults are more vocal outside the nest.
Carrizo Plain
Last weekend we made a quick camping trip to Carrizo Plain. Wildflower season is just heating up, after a long, wet and cold winter and early spring.
Carrizo Plain is no longer as secluded as it was when we first visited, but we were able to find some nice uncrowded campsites along some of the dirt side roads. Even though there were a lot of visitors near Soda Lake, we had plenty of space to ourselves.
We’ve posted about visits to Carrizo Plain a couple of times before: Spring Transect (2016) and Carrizo Plain (2017).
March 31-April 3, 2023