Snowing in Concord.....



 Well almost.  The Bay Area is pretty funny weather wise in February.  It was just two weeks ago we were talking about  being in the 70's with one day making it 80.  This week we are talking about low elevation snow.


I mean really low.  And the benefit of living in our new house is that we can look out the back of our house and see the snow on the nearby hill, not to mention the snow on Mt. Diablo.  The snow level Friday night got down to about 1,500 feet.  We are now a little over 500 feet now, so it had been pretty cold with snow/rain mix.

We decided yesterday, after service, to take the kids up the mountain to play in the white stuff.  By that time, it was now snowing at the 2000 foot level.  They had closed the road before the Juniper Campground cut-off, so it meant a little bit of a hike.

I couldn't believe how many people made the trek up the mountain.  And how many took their little ones up there without gloves.  They had the sleds though.

The kids had a great time throwing snowballs.  Emma made a nice little snowman.  Beth and I played a little snowball baseball.    It was pretty fun.  It was a wet snow, which meant we got cold and wet pretty quick. 

After a while, we hiked back to the car.  Of course, there wasn't much snow under the trees.  So the kids switched into Salamander hunting mode.  They found a few then hit the jackpot:  another Woodland scorpion!!!

Western Woodland Scorpion on Mt. Diablo

This one was pretty feisty, especially for it being so cold.  We got some great pictures of it though.

After that we headed home. 

Winter Break, California Newts and Posion Oak

During the first week of winter break, Beth and the kids had been taken up with Angela Behrens and the kids to look for salamanders. You will find the pictures on 12/23/2009 on Our Picture Site. Here is a funny movie of them being chased by cows.

The movie stopped because the bull came a cross the ravine and began following them.

What makes this movie even funnier is when you know that Beth has grew up around farm animals!!!

I had taken the second weekend off and we decided to go back up so Beth could show me the area. It is amazing that there are so many places within 15 minutes of our house for us to explore. The hike was pretty harmless (so I thought). It had rained a couple of days before, so the ground was a bit moist. However, we found the cache we had been searching for. And a bonus. The following are some pictures from that day.

So as I was putting away the Newts, Emma starts saying "Papa, come here quick!!! There is something that will sting and kill you!!!" She had been turning over logs looking for more newts and salamanders and came across this:

This is a Western Woodland Scorpion. They mainly stay near the coast and are located from California as far north as southern Washington State. Their sting is like a bee sting. We never knew this even existed outside the desert, less nearby.

The day came to an end and we had our lunch. There is a fun tree to climb and the kids were all over it.

The following day, we decided to hike the Rim Trail around the Lafayette Reservoir. It is a fun trail, and Myles can finally walk most of it. These are some of the pictures:

Well after 40 years of reciting "leaves of three, let them be" and following urban myths like, Poison Oak is only poisonous when it is red, I think I got a little cocky. I mean, over the years I have hiked in many different areas, Lake Shasta, Washington State, and definitely had no problem taking "deer" trails. Well it finally struck.

It was the most painful and maddening three weeks. Besides the initial reaction to poison oak, I also had an allergic reaction. The funny thing is that I didn't realize that I had poison oak until a week latter when the allergic reaction happened. I finally went to the doctor who gave a steroid to help with the reaction. Since it took me a week to understand what it was, Beth unfortunately was exposed, though did not have as bad a reaction.
Here are some of the pictures of the onslaught.