The Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve/Austin Creek State Recreation Area, North of San Francisco is an awesome set of parks in California.  There’s this great hike here that I’ve done many times that takes you through a great diversity of landscapes, all within a few miles.

Back in 2006 Meghan and I hiked here on a pretty hot July weekend (July might not be the peak time to visit this park!) with temps hovering around 100 degrees.  We were happy when the trail dipped into the cover of the trees and even happier when we could hike along the cool waters of the creek (shallow water be damned we still took a swim to cool off).  But the trail starts and finishes up in the golden hills.

I took this image early on in the hike (before being dehydrated and forced to drink from the aforementioned creek after our water ran out).

In the past 15 years I’ve really grown to love the California landscape (captured so perfectly in Steinbeck’s East of Eden) and I like the way this photo captures some of that: the endless rolling golden hills, with the contrasting ultra-green oaks and shrubs.  There’s even a hint of fog off in the distance.  On this clear day there was very little haze in the dry air so the view is clear for miles.

I took this photo with my Canon SD550 – a little pocket camera that takes really nice photos (when the lighting is right).  I even created an 8×10 print of this image that looks really great.   I don’t really use the SD550 anymore, preferring instead the either more compact cell phone camera, or better controlled Canon G10 (depending on the situation); I usually have both with me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 4:18 pm and is filed under nature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.