Walk in the rainy meadows

We drove up int he rain to Pilot Hill and met our friend at The Hindquarter restaurant for lunch. Nobody else was there and it never opened, so we drove a few miles up to Cool and the craft brewpub – talking with the pub-staff we discovered that her (the server’s) husband had just played a gig at The Hindquarter – on its last night. They shut down last Saturday. After lunch we went back down the hill for a hike at the Cronan Ranch Trails.

Gradually the sun came out and temps shot up from the mid 60’s to the low 80’s. The dry grasses were burnt blond and still wet, and a musty smelling steam cam up from the sheaves. This dilapidated shack was a movie-set for a 2000’s era made-for-TV movie, “Love Comes Softly”. There were a couple other movies in the series.

We got down to the South Fork of the American River and skipped stones. Normally a lot of kayak-ers and river-rafters pull in here and have lunch, but it was Thursday and the river was quiet. The sky cleared and we knew that the rain must have helped the firefighters.

Some of the smaller Oak trees down by the river were thickly festooned with moss and lichen.

The walk was about a 4-mile round-trip and we saw nobody, only hoof-prints of horses and dogs and deer – and a bicycle tread. Hunting is allowed (smoothbore shotgun for deer) and there’s all kinds of tendentious wildlife besides rattlesnakes, including mountain lions, so I carried.