hiking &pictures ranjeet on 29 May 2010 12:59 pm
Morgan State Territory, April 2010
I’ve been trying something new recently. Namely, I went to Meetup and started joining hiking groups. I figured there are a lot of people in the Bay Area who like to hike, and I could tap into their latent desire to organize things. For this particular weekend, the organized hike was up at the Morgan Territory Regional Preserve, an open space just north of Livermore, in the East Bay. Now is pretty much the best time to visit, because Winter is over and Summer has not really begun. In July, this hike would have been intolerable due to the heat, since East Bay gets really hot and this hike has very little shade. In Spring, however, the wildflowers are out, which is a nice treat.
For the first half of the hike, we just admired the wildflowers and the rolling hills. The views were not fantastic, although there was a pretty good view of the peaks of Mt. Diablo. The second half of the hike was more shaded, and passed through groves of trees and poison ivy (luckily, I didn’t run into any) while climbing rather steeply back towards the parking lot.
Overall, this hike wasn’t all that interesting. The wildflowers were nice, and the more challenging portions of this hike were interesting, but it was fairly short (~ 5 miles) and the views were not great (it was a little bit hazy). It was nice to visit an area that I hadn’t hiked at before, and we had a great lunch at Sai’s, a vietnamese restaurant in Livermore. I’ll give it a B-, but the whole experience an A-.
Flickr Set Here
Slideshow Below
Pictures & descriptions after the jump.
Its traditional to take a picture of everyone before they get sweaty and angry. The turnout wasn’t that great, but it was a good group of people.
Its Spring, so the wildflowers are coming out in the hills. My camera is not awesome enough to really see it, though, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that the purple glow on that hill is due to wildflowers.
Since wildflowers were a main feature of this hike, I felt compelled to take some pictures of flowers. Unfortunately, I’m not enough of a naturist to be able to tell what kind of flower this is.
Off in the distance, I could see the twin peaks of Mt. Diablo.
We took a moment mid-hike to share our snacks.
There was really only one point during this hike that I had a look east towards the Sierras. Not that I could see the Sierras or anything.
I walked up to the high ground to get a better look while we took a small break.
Most of the flowers I saw during the first part of the hike were blue, so I was happy to see some different colors.
I took advantage of my tripod + Gorillapod technique to make a good camera support for this group picture. The twin peaks of Diablo rise behind us.
One last shot of the rolling hills and Diablo in the background.