Morning Walk

I got out for a nice stroll yesterday morning.  The creek that flows by our place is called Hatch Creek.  Our road is Hatch Creek Lane- oh, lane!  That reminds me about street suffixes.  Look at all these beautiful street suffixes- http://www.usps.com/ncsc/lookups/abbr_suffix.txt  Alright, back to the walk.  The light was patchy so the pictures aren't great, not that I could take good ones anyway.  It was great to poke around a familiar place, it's as beautiful here as ever.  Whoever named California the "Golden State" has never been here in the spring.(this is california's official state nickname, designated in 1968, although it was for the poppies I guess, not the golden hills of dry grass...)  The rolling hills of green grass growing are so fertile right now, the cows are doing back-flips. 

patchy light

gooseheads

two guys, four poles- very sporting d-bags

This old foundation is below the high water mark.  the new Don Pedro Dam was built in 1971, submerging many homes along the Tuolumne and its tributaries.  The old Don Pedro dam, completed in 1923, still stands submerged under current lake levels.  The original capacity was 14.3 percent of today's reservoir.

gbh

still learning...

It was porcelain.  A toilet corner maybe?

Hatch Creek's high water mark for the year.

Green leaves in the litter show it is this years mark.

Aliens!

Eh?

Ohhhhhh...

what are you?

Neighbors.  This is probably the mos beautiful place to live.  Ever.

H. blackberry choked creek.

I was trying to figure out what this was.  At first I thought some sort of strainer for a swollen creek.  But I decided on fence.

This interesting fence was acquired from cargo planes leftover from probably wwii.  I am looking into this with the neighbors for a full history, stay tuned. 

Hmmm

Somebody did some bad grass.

"They are all bred beef: beef heart, beef hide, beef hocks.  They're a human product like rayon.  They're like a field of shoes.  They have cast-iron shanks and tongues like foam insoles.  You can't see to their brains as you can with other animals; they have beef fat behind their eyes, beef stew."  Annie Dillard

It's pretty amazing to see the differences in ground cover of the slopes that the cows can't reach.  Ranching changed the landscape back west.

Ah shit.

And then I heard a laughing noise coming from the hill.  What could it be?

Tracks!

It's wild turkey!  Not that kind of turkey!

That kind!

Come back friends!

And before I knew it I had chased them to the top of the hill.

Not again!

A new type of culvert engineering.