Weekend Reflections -- Santa Ynez River

The Santa Ynez river in Santa Barbara County, California.
I left the thick stuff at the left in the photo to show you what we had to battle through to get to this reflection.

For reflections by other photographers go to Weekend Reflections by James.



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Santa Ynez Mountains - Rancho Oso 2

At the end of the trail was a beautiful waterfall and pool.  This canyon was at east 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the trail. We liked it so much that we also hiked up there the next day.

feel free to enlarge

I figured I'd get the obligatory blurred background photo out of the way early.

The water tumbling down towards the top of the photo is probably about 100 feet up.

One of my favorites. The water, ferns and rocks all at the same angle.

It was hard to show the scale of this because the canyon was so narrow at this point, that I couldn't get very far away.

Cat tails along the Santa Ynez river. I didn't post any photos of it, because it would spoil Friday's post.

Jimson Weed (Datura)

The southern California version of the blue jay. It's called a Scrub Jay.

They don't make airplanes out of empty beer and soda cans, but they still have a very interesting story.  This is James and Nikki. We met them at the campground. They are from New Zealand and have been living in England for several years.  They quit their jobs in England and are on their way back home to New Zealand, via the U.S. They've been here for about 4 months driving around in a rented RV. They've driven it thousands of miles and have had a bunch of experiences. Some good and some bad.  I was going to make this a much better post, but I'm too tired...

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Santa Ynez Mountains - Rancho Oso 1

My last couple of posts were from some mountains in San Diego County. Right after returning from that trip, we went on another.  This time to the Santa Ynez Mountains, inland from the Beautiful town of Santa Barbara.

This campground was located on a working horse ranch

Where there are horses, there must be tack

Where there is tack, there must be bunk houses (rental cabins actually). No, we didn't stay in one these things. We were roughing it in our RV.

One reason we wanted to come here was the hiking trails. Here is my granddaughter looking pretty chipper at the beginning of a hike.

As you can see, the trail started to deteriorate quickly. I wasn't concerned because there was supposed to be a great payoff at the end of this hike.

This isn't the payoff, but it was still a very nice waterfall.

I'm thinking there will be only one person who sees and will know right away what it is.  For those of you who don't know, this one was about 9 inches long.  Okay Bossy Betty, what is it?

The hike continues on the next post...

Okay, it's a banana slug!

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