Walk #115: A Family Walk...

On a very nice day, the whole family escorted me on my walk. Kylie and Jazmine on their bikes. Angel on her paws. Joni and myself on our feet.

If you look close you can see a track of (what we think is) a turkey vulture. Joni's hand gives perspective to the size of the bird:

Ed Abbey said that walking uphill was just so needless. I agree. The girls had to push their bikes up hill for part of the walk. Too steep.

Taking a walk with Joni is a delight. I swear she knows the names of every plant (or at least what family they are in). Here she admires some wild flowers in an area that was burned last summer:

And she tried to teach me some new plants. The white, puffy one next to the tree is a Pearly Everlasting.
And we figured out the name of the yellow flowering shrub, that is all over the place: Scotch Broom. Evidently this is an invasive species--like Tamarisk in the Colorado plateau--which is quickly crowding out native flora here in the Sierra/Cascade foothills:

We are so lucky to have chosen to live in such a wild and wonderful area. Sometimes I have to pinch myself that we actually live here. Imagine this, you leave your front door and take an hour hike, never encountering another human or (much worse) an automobile the entire time. What is that worth? What is it worth to investigate a new bird track or a new flower?

The richest things are those which have no value.