Walking Time: 2 hrs., 58 min. of walking (between the hours of 4:12 and 7:21 p.m.)
Start and End Point(s):
1.) Joe's Cafe, parking lot, Redwood Highway, San Rafael, CA
2.) Street parking on Paul Drive, near Redwood Highway, San Rafael, CA
It was a beautiful spring day today. The hills and grasses are still mostly green, assisted by lots of rain this year. Even so they'll start turning the color of dried straw in a week or two. I worked my way West to East today -- walking first up the Redwood Highway (a frontage road to Highway 101, shown as double yellow lines above on the map). I was surrounded by cicadas making noise for a few minutes. I was only able to find/see two of them; but it sounded like there were many more "singing" to each other. I also passed a number of interesting looking small businesses. Several catered to pets, with promises of luxury cat boarding; bed and biscuits for dogs; and other services.
Next, I then followed the trails (red lines) to John F. McInnis Park -- where there were lots of birds, and flowers in bloom. There were kayakers on the water, and several people out walking their dogs. I walked around the first of two large loop trails (the bottom of the two). I'll walk the upper loop next time.
I also felt like I was living in a Dr. Suess book today, as I saw a vole in a hole (pictured), some quail on the trail (also pictured), and a duck in some muck. I did not see a cat in the hat, until I came home; and there I discovered one cat sitting on/in my hats.
Wildlife Sightings:
2 Cicadas; 9 clouds of gnats; 33 little brown jobs (LBJs); 13 crows; 1 lizard (+ two blurs in bushes that were probably lizards); 20 ducks; 11 quail; 4 turkey vultures circling overhead; 1 mockingbird; 2 blue jays (without crests); 2 balls in water (1 tennis and 1 whiffle ball); 3 unidentified little flying bugs (LFBs); 2 doves; 13 red-winged blackbirds; 1 vole in hole; 26 sea gulls; 10 black-necked stilts; 6 American Avocets; 25 unidentified brownish shorebirds; 8 black beetles; 4 killdeer; 1 kite hovering about baylands; 1 tern?; 6 big fat black and yellow bumblebees; 1 orange and brown butterfly/moth; 1 snowy egret; and 1 (dead) fairly large (almost 3 feet long) brown snake.
Your "vole in hole" pictured above is actually a pocket gopher. The small, rounded ears with dark patch behind them distinguish this pocket gopher from a vole with its large, well-haired ears.
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