Camping with My Brother
July 9-10, 2016
WARNING: Pictures of creepy spiders are found below. Proceed at your own peril.
Also, Sorry to those of you who follow and/or comment on my posts as well as those I normally follow. I've been having some computer problems at home that make replying to my posts on this site and those I follow difficult.
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| Castle Crags State Park, CA |
Sam and I met my brother and niece for a one-night camping trip at Castle Crags State Park on Saturday. It was a nice little trip, although I didn't take a lot of photos. We ate sketchy camp food and played a couple of games of Pirate Fluxx. I couldn't hike up to the vista point with Pongo, so we mostly stuck around the campsite and enjoyed each others' company. It was nice, in that sense.
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| Castle Crags State Park, CA |
Sam, Pongo and I stopped at Colusa National Wildlife Refuge on the way home. It's at about the halfway point, making it a good spot to stretch our legs and let Pongo have a little adventure. There's a short hiking trail where he was able to chase an uncountable number of lizard off of the trail. It's summer so the waterfowl are mostly gone except for a lone greater white-fronted goose that we saw at the pond near the parking lot.
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| Common Buckeye - Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, CA |
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| Western Tiger Swallowtail |
We saw a lot of butterflies. I chased down a handful of buckeyes but couldn't get a good photo. They kept their wings open only for a few seconds after landing, which never gave me enough time to find them in the viewfinder, focus and zoom in. That shot above was the best I could pull enough. You get the idea, I guess. They have wonderful eyeball patterns on their wings.
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| Western Tiger Swallowtail -- Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, CA |
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| Monarch |
We saw a large number of white butterflies as well as a few swallowtails and a couple dozen monarchs. I'm used to seeing monarchs in large numbers at their wintering grounds in Pacific Grove, but this was a bit different. Here we were seeing them among the milkweed in one of their summer hangouts. There's even a sign on the trail that notes the area as a designated monarch environment. Pretty cool.
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| Monarch -- Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, CA |
OK. Here come the spiders. I'm only going to post the two creepiest spiders we saw. I haven't been able to identify them.
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| Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, CA |
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| Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, CA |
We didn't notice all of the spiders until about half way through the hike, and then they seemed to be everywhere we turned. I'm not afraid of spiders, but I have to admit I was a little freaked out by the end of that hike. There were some big and scary-looking arachnids out there! Sam has always been afraid of spiders, so he was jumping left and right all the way back to the car.
Here's a nice photo of a field of flowers to clear your mind if you've made it this far.
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| Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, CA |
