Cary is right — it was a great trip.
Great weather, too. It's nice to have such a large wild are so close by our urban area — once you get much into it you can stand on a ridge an see no sign of man. One thing that trip established — even though Coe has a fearsome reputation for steep up-and-down travel, you can make a much more moderate trip if you string together staying as much on the ridges as you can. I'd even recommend filling your water containers late afternoon and then dry-camping up on a ridge — Nate and I did so Friday night; and night up there was just spectacular. Full hemispherical sky dome overhead.
If you recall from the start of this thread, one of the goals was to time the trip to catch good Spring wildflowers. I would say we did that — there was quite a bit of variety, and good quantity. One small white wildflower was so abundant that some hillsides looked as if they were covered with a heavy frost. One bush with white flowers was so fragrant that you could not help noticing the fragrance even tens of feet away (if you were downwind) — not to mention hiking the trail when that bush lined both sides of the trail. Vivid orange California poppy were mixed in with other flowers, making a striking, and very nice, contrast. Also some very large areas of pretty solid poppies — wow!
On the way out today, a deer stopped about 20 feet away from me, and looked me over very thoroughly — long enough that I was beginning to get a bit nervous wondering whether there was something wrong with the deer — before it bounded away. I have never has such a close-up view of a wild deer.
And Cary has the sharpest eyes for seeing the fauna — including snakes, lizards, turtles and other things that the rest of us missed. Among other things, he's the one that spotted the bobcat.
Cary, thanks for your earlier compliment. Glad the route worked out well.
–MV
