Today’s hike is at Magnolia ranch. If you follow my blog you know I was here last Saturday at Cronan Ranch, which is the sister trailhead. The Trail network goes between the two parking areas and shares many of the same trails.
Today we have 17 of us that will be hiking together today, as usual many are regular or returning hikers to our group, but a couple new as well.
We start off on a hillside with fairly heavy oak coverage. We are hiking alongside and a little above the south Fork of the American river. Occasionally, we can see it poke through the trees.
We take a moment at a beautiful view point for a group picture.
You may remember two of my Car companions from the desert Southwest trip post, Dori and Christy. Both are a couple of pretty cool friends that I have been blessed to meet through this group.
As we leave the viewpoint, I get another nice shot of the river before entering an area of incense cedars . They typically grow higher up, but this valley has a micro climate that they thrive in.
As we moved from one hillside to another, we across a feeder stream that has a substantial Bridge across it
This plant is also known as the Christmas Berry plant. During the fall season and it grows these bright red berries contrasting its dark green leaves.
One of my favorite views of the river is on this hillside. There is a memorial bench here as well with the Bible verse “come to me all who are weary, and I will provide you rest”.
We reached the up-and-down trail and will be taking the up route.
At the top of the up down trail is another incredible Vista looking out not only over the river, but also the valleys around us unfortunately with the heavy fog and cloud cover today the views are not nearly as spectacular as normal
We dropped back down from the Vista and come to the intersection that we passed on the way around the backside of the mountain. I’m here. We will rejoin the trail that we approached on back to our group photo site.
I found another couple of great mushroom species. I don’t know anything about edible mushrooms, but my guess is the “Death Cap” is not one of them.
After passing our group picture site, we dropped back down to the Rivers edge. The plant pictured here is the Scotch Broom which is an invasive species that grows along the river in this area.
After walking along side, the river for a bit, we stopped at a wide open beach area and took the opportunity to skip some rocks.
If you follow my blog, you know that I often say I really enjoy moss covered rocks and trees. There is a beautiful grouping of them at this spot.
The sound from the river passing over the Rapids it’s very soothing. It’s also nice to look at.
The foliage along the trail today is very green. Last time I was on this section it was summer and this was all brown.
We have a few kayaks, floating past us in the water. I bet the splashes they receive from the rapids are cold.
Shortly we rejoined the main trail coming in from the parking lot arriving safely back at our cars. Today we did 8.6 miles. The weather never did warm up, but it was not cold enough to put on my jacket or pant legs. I had a great time getting to know some of our first time group hikers today as well as catching up with some of the others.
