Back in the East Bay

After spend a few days in Santa Cruz visiting friends, we are now at Anthony Chabot Regional Park in the hills east of Oakland for the week. We are meeting our friends from Reno in Calistoga on Friday, so this was a good intermediate location to settle for the week.

A big rain storm is expected Tuesday and into Wednesday, so we used our Monday to do a nice loop in the hills of the East Bay before hand.

The first part of the loop follows Redwood Creek up the valley. Yes, it is lined with Redwoods. This creek was apparently the descriptor location for the first rainbow trout. In addition, it had gigantic redwoods, apparently some of the largest of all time, that were cut in the 1840's to build Oakland and the large trees today are their 2nd growth resprouts.

On the ridgeline, the views unfortunately were obscured by too much brush and small trees, but there were glimpses of the East Bay mountains including Mount Diablo.

During the storm, we are going to San Francisco to visit the natural history museum on Tuesday and then on Wednesday to Richmond to see Rosie the Riverter National Historic Park and to celebrate Linda's birthday in Berkeley.