Tuesday, September 17, 2013

New Adventures...

I haven't posted any real "adventures" for a while, mostly because we haven't been feeling that adventurous lately. Hopefully that will change once I have Saturdays off, starting in October and the weather cools off enough for us to get out and do more! Dave and I have opposite days off, which kinda limits our time out away from home unless one or both of us takes time off work!

We have gotten into the mountains a little this summer, but unfortunately, most of my hiking has been done at work and at night! We started doing night hikes in addition to full moon hikes at the park so for the summer we've been doing about two night hikes a month.

One thing I've noticed about where we live now is that to go hiking, we have to actually GO somewhere, either the 2 1/2 hours up to Lake Tahoe or into other areas because we are pretty much surrounded by farm land. There are some cool areas nearby, like Wilson Canyon, we need to explore...so hopefully soon there will be more real adventures to post!

 
Full moon along the park's nature trail
 
 
Two hikes in a row we got to see/hear rattlesnakes!
 
 
It seems to want to thunderstorm right before the full moon hikes, which I think is great, but it kind of keeps the people away! Last one we only had 4 because of the storm, but we got some great pictures (like these horses with the clouds) and some good sunsets!
 
 
Looking west at sunset.
 
 


Monday, September 16, 2013

Caterpillar

We found this little guy (or girl?) in the parking lot at work:


After a little bit of online searching, we found out it is a two-tailed swallowtail butterfly! This thing was a couple inches long and really strange-looking so it stood out really well. I learned that they start out green. When they turn brown, it's time for them to go looking for somewhere to build their cocoon so they can turn into one of those huge yellow and black butterflies!