Parking

I do not understand myself some days! At the last meeting of the California Parks docents I volunteered to participate in the July 4th parade. The costume for said parade is 3/4 finished and the parade is what, about 34 hours away. I think I can wrap things up in an hour or so, and in that sense I'm not panicking, but it certainly is getting down to the wire. You'll know what I'm doing tomorrow....

Feeling rushed and unprepared, I'm already longing for the next trip to the woods. These photos are from Donner Memorial State Park, last weekend's trip that I'm still relishing. You can see the lodgepole pine trees which dominate the area. They have small pine cones, about two inches long, and are characteristically striped of all needles on the lower branches as the upper ones compete for the light. The top photo shows a stripped tree in the lower right hand corner. The needles are in bundles of two.

I'm almost to the point of measuring my weeks by how many parks I get to see. This afternoon, for example, I spent a couple hours in Howarth Park, an urban setting in Santa Rosa, California. So I guess it's been a two-park week, but I was at Donner for four days so really, most of the time has been "parked."