The morning after I had visited the Anderson Ranch and hiked along Cache Creek, I returned to the park to explore more of the trails in this beautiful landscape. I wasn’t completely sure where I was going, but I tried to follow the signs toward the ridge, thinking I might find a nice view of Clear Lake or even just the marsh. Even at 9:30 in the morning the sun was already feeling pretty warm, so I looked forward to a walk under the oaks. But first, there was open grassland and quite a few wildflowers to enjoy.

Field owl’s-clover

Not sure what this flower is, but I saw quite a few of them

Goldfields were also very abundant

Pausing to look back toward the farm buildings

I caught only the tail end of this air battle between two red-wing blackbirds and a hungry hawk

This was only the first part of my hike to the Ridge Point; I’ll continue my exploration in a later post!