Well, I had kind of a rough weekend. I found out my Grandma died on, of all dates, Friday the 13th. I found out on Saturday. So I’ve been kind of sad all weekend.

Raffa and I went for a little hike at Quail Hollow Ranch on Saturday. This time I brought my camera 😉 . You can see the pics I took here. I wrote about this place when we first discovered it back in June. It is lovely. It used to be the home of the editor of Sunset Magazine. The photo above is the house on the property that he lived in with his family. The ranch is now owned by Santa Cruz County and is used as park space. The house and the surrounding area is a lovely place for weddings. In fact, both times we’ve hiked here there have been a wedding going on. It’s very idyllic.

We took this trail called “Sunset Trail”. It’s a mile climb to the top of ths peak that overlooks Zayante Valley. On the way up there are carvings in the sandstone and it kind of looks like grafitti. It’s harmless grafitti, though, since the rain will wash it all away in the winter. Raffa added his own scrawl:

And here is the gorgeous view. Unfortunately, it looks like they did some mining and scarred the landscape 😦 . Yes, those are rare Coast Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) that have been raped from the landscape. It sucks. I love redwoods trees. They are super tall and some are so old that experts don’t even know how old they are. There is one in Big Basin that is over 2,000 years old! Imagine, a tree that has been around as long as Christ! Being around them is amazing. It is almost spiritual. So when I see them stripped from the landscape I get bummed. They only grow along a very narrow strip of land on the California and Oregon coast, and that is it.