The Santa Cruz Trail

Pie being excited that she found the trail head.

This is the second time I've hiked this trail. The first time I did not bring my camera because I did not expect it to be so pretty. You start off on a wide dirt road, then branch onto an actual trail. The trail follows the creek and is shaded by lots of trees. Then it starts winding up into the hills and the vegetation becomes more typical California sagebrush. Next it traverses across a rock face and continues up though a mountain meadow and to another rock face. We did not make it as far as the first rock face this time.

The dogs had lot of fun playing in the creek. In many places the creek is deep enough to swim due to large rocks forming pools. Typically, my dogs would not stay on the trail and had to keep leaving it to play in the creek. I don't know why they like the water so much.

Kate and Border Collie Power were also with us. Here are pictures from our hike.

On the road. Pie had her water pack but didn't need it due to all the water along the trail.

Neither of these pictures are in focus, but both of them show how green the plants are along the creek. I even saw some ferns! To me it did not look like Southern CA at all. The first one does a little because you can see an oak tree. But there were plenty of non-oaks to be seen also.

Pie tucking along the trail, wondering what is taking us so long, no doubt.
Transitioning to the sagebrush.
A gardener snake that... um... surprised Kate. There were actually two but the other one slithered away. This one politely posed for his picture.
Over the side to play in the water. Come back!
Swimming in a deep spot.

A pretty flower.

Fancy poses on an odd rock.

Pie comes back to check on me. Notice her wet paw prints.
Heading back.

Scenery.

More scenery. Fancy jumps from a bank as Pie waits just long enough in order to land right on top of Fancy for maximum badness.
Pie pulls a big stick up out of the ground to play with. Fancy helped pull it up.

Then Pie abandoned the big stick and picked up this smaller one. Fancy quickly discarded her twig and attempted to take over Pie's prize.

Another pretty flower.Power hangs onto a rock for dear life. There are not many pictures of Power because she was walking on leash behind us.

The dogs had fun jumping off the rocks into the water in this spot.

This creature was sneaky. I think it is a skink. But I don't know what kind. If you look very closely, you can see legs in the picture, but at the time, neither Kate or I could spot any legs. My first glance of him made me think rattlesnake due to the coloring, but upon closer inspection (from a safe distance) we could see it was some kind of lizard thing. Obviously, there are many clues he is not a rattlesnake. Not only does he not have rattle, and has a body and a tail, but his head is also not nearly wide enough.

After I was done taking pictures of him, I spotted his friend behind us.
You can clearly see his front leg, but this is with the zoom, and I couldn't see it at the time. I am sorry to say I do not find this creature to be very attractive. The snake was much more elegant and beautiful.

The gang and I. Bosco did not come. I'm not sure how much endurance he has, plus, I do not like to hike with dogs on leash and he would have needed to stay on leash. The backpack is my camelbak. It worked quite well.

Bye for now!

I am sure I will be back. Someday I will make it further!