Magnolia Ranch day hike

 Thursday, February 12

Today I am with the Bayside adventure Hiking Group at Magnolia Ranch. We have five people in our group, four regular core members and one new person.  It is a beautiful day, completely clear skies and nice warm sun.

Magnolia Ranch is a place I hike often. It is actually comprised of two properties. Croan Ranch is to our west. Both properties are managed by the BLM. We have some Rolling Hills, somewhat steep, climbs, and riverside trail. Most areas of the trail have beautiful views, especially during this part of the season when everything is green.  

With the recent rain, the lichen covering the oak trees is very full and plump

This portion of Trail sits at an altitude and aspect that it is very conducive to the growth of California Cedars. There are large groves of then as we enter this little valley. They’re very pretty with the bright green, broad leaves and reddish bark.

The colorful moss is also very active with the moisture at this time of year, covering logs, trees and rocks.

One of the beautiful points of this trail is a fairly substantially built footbridge which crosses the small river.

After the bridge, we get to the section of Trail that will probably be our steepest climb today. While, not excessive we will have a few switchbacks back-and-forth on the way up.

There’s a beautiful purple bloom Along the trail. It is the first we’ve seen this season. I look forward to more color starting to pop soon.

About midway up our slope, we get our first views of the beautiful South Fork American river

We wrapped around a knob and have another beautiful view of the river; this time looking downstream.

I like the sign on this bench. While not referenced, It is a Bible verse.

After winding along a mid slope path amongst shaded oaks, we break out into a large open meadow of green rolling hills. We will head down to the bank of the river shortly.

We have reached the rivers edge and are taking a quick snack break. It’s a beautiful sound of the water rushing over the rocks.

After leaving the river, we go through some more rolling hills. I passed this large rock formation off to my left, but I don’t remember seeing before.

We continue up the valley which is wide open and we are completely surrounded by more beautiful green rolling hills with some ranch access roads running through the middle which we hike on.

We’re back out of the rolling hills and into more oak covered trail as we take a fairly downhill back into the valley

The Pacific Madrone has an oval shaped leaf with red bark and is not very typical in this area. However, we do have a couple good examples on the trail.

Our route brings us back up the trail and past the resting bench that I pictured earlier we stopped and sat for a few minutes, looking at the river below us

One of the things I enjoy about taking a hike that reverses back on the trail that you were on is you see a different view. Here I look out across the valley upstream at some more grass covered hills in the distance.

We’ve come across another spring flower. The western buttercup.

We returned to the footbridge taking us back over the river.

We reached the junction of the initial trail. We came in on, however, our turning to the right and adding another small loop to the tail end of the hike.

A picnic table sits atop of a hill with a beautiful view of the river. We are treated to an unexpected bloom of an attractive yellow Daffodil and a white Blue Dicks.

We arrive back at the cars having height 7.7 miles today. The weather was absolutely fantastic and the scenery was beautiful. The people were friendly with good conversations.