September 22, 2011
While we were in flitting about the north parts of California we heard about Armstrong Woods and decided to stop. Everyone had been urging us to go see Muir Woods (just north of SF) and we had that on the agenda, but figured… why not stop here since we’re driving right by.
It’s a beautiful place. There were people, but it wasn’t crowded at all. There were paved walking paths and then some unpaved paths too. One could spend many hours hiking there. Here are a few of the many many photos I took.
This is called (according to the tour guides at Korbel where you will see this too) a fairy circle. When a redwood is cut down and the stump is left in the ground, it sends out shoots all around the base and a ring of trees grows.
I saw this gentleman walking along and decided it would be nice to have a person in the shot to give some sort of scale to the trees.
The next is the Parson Jones tree. It’s the second oldest (the pic of the the oldest tree didn’t turn out quite so well). It’s 310 ft tall, 13.8 ft in diameter and approximately 1300 years old.
This a cross section of a tree that fell during the 1906 SF earthquake. The various plaques show important dates in history.
Down to the date it sprang into being.
There are even a few root balls on display.
And naturally I had to find one tree that I could lean against and look straight up.
That is certainly not all, so if you ever are north of SF - do look for this place. We passed on Muir Woods because it was so extremely crowded we would have had to park nearly a mile down the road and walk back. Armstrong was far better if only because it was less crowded.
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September 20, 2011
While we were in California we toured the Korbel Winery. They have 2 tours, the main part of the winery, where they make champagne, and a garden tour. The original Korbel house and gardens are still on the site although no one lives in the house anymore. There are some lovely gardens surrounding the house. I don’t know all of the flower names, but they are pretty. As usual you can click to make them bigger if you want.
I caught a butterfly here:
This one was eye-catching
This is from a rose bush that is over 100 years old growing on the side of the house.
This is a cork tree. Let us all bow to this lovely little plant that allowed wine bottles to be properly closed for many many years.
This was the strangest plant I’ve ever seen. Some sort of Chinese plant with teal petals… wow!
And last of all we have this one. Interesting flower. Not sure what it’s supposed to be doing but interesting.
This concludes our garden tour. If I have time, there will be a tour of the Armstrong Forest tomorrow.
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ooooo and now i see crayons!Powered by Minx 1.1.4-pink.
