El Dorado Trail

 April 6

Today is a post I was not planning to do. I was invited for a hike by my friend Eric and Cindy when I first looked at the route it did not seem like it was going to be anything worth posting; I stand corrected. We are hiking a portion of the El Dorado Trail. We access it down an old ranch Road and parked on a wide spot next to a railroad right of way.

After Eric took a few pictures at some railroad trestles, and I saw increasing numbers of wildflowers  I realized I should have been taking pictures and making notes. The scenery, especially the wildflowers are astonishing today. I started my video and pictures for the return leg. Our trail is a long side and an inactive railway. The rail bed itself is fairly level. Our side trail rises and falls along the hills next to the tracks.

I mentioned at the wildflowers…. absolute beauty. There are a wide variety along the trail.

There are also large clumps of poison oak rapidly growing that we have to watch out for; however, the trail does provide adequate clearance.

There is active cattle grazing pastures that we walk along side. We bumped into a married couple on quads with an adorable young boy dressed in his cowboy outfit. They had just moved some of the cattle from one pasture to another.

I regularly find myself stopping for more pictures of the flowers. Many I have seen before, but there are a couple of new species to me as well.

At one part of the trail, there has been a washout. I stood at the end of a section of track where a  gully has formed between it and its continuation. The trail just dropped off to the side a bit, and went around it without an issue.

There are short sections where we walk along the rail bed itself, as well as a number of bridges going over water features that we cross on the tracks across the trellis.

A little farther down the track we come to another area where the tracks have been covered with rock and dirt from another washout above, and shortly after go through an area where they have carved through the hillside making a miniature canyon.

The middle portion of our hike has multiple rivers that we cross on larger bridges,, and the landscape flattened out and gives wide views of the surrounding pastures

God continues to provide more beautiful flowers along the way for us to admire

We go by one more pasture that was empty at the start of our hike, but now is filled with more cattle

As we reach the end of the hike, we are greeted by a large field of golden poppies. 

It was a beautiful out and back hike a total of 12.9 Miles