Yesterday's Hike

Yesterday was another beautiful day here in northern California. They are getting to be more and more frequent, thank goodness! I have to say those cold rainy days don't exactly thrill me. Anyway, it being such a nice day and Vanessa and I feeling mostly healthy (we've been out of action for a week or so with colds), we decided to go on a hike on some Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands we'd come across on a recent back country drive. We were actually super psyched because these lands are quite literally out in the middle of NOWHERE and aren't as popular as Whiskeytown for example cause way fewer people know about them and because they are out in the middle of nowhere. We started our hike on the Oak Slough Trail in the middle of a cattle herd.Cows really are photogenic animals, don't you think? As you can imagine, we were following a cow trail at this point.It made me feel like I was back on the farm in Missouri except everything is so much BIGGER here. There is so much space, it really makes me feel small.The cool thing about BLM lands is that you can leave the trail! So we did and cut across the fields and streams, taking frequent breaks, to the Sacramento River. It is so beautiful and calming just sitting near water. The sounds are so peaceful. It doesn't seem to matter whether it's waves or flowing, it always relaxes me.So we sat here for a while just soaking everything up and drawing in the sand.Eventually we did move on and up, so that we were overlooking the northeastern part of the valley towards Lassen. The views were incredible!Eventually we did turn around and head back. We didn't want to, but we really didn't want to be stuck out there after dark either. So of course we had to hike back through the cows. For some reason they were much friskier three hours later in the day and the calves kept chasing, well Vanessa says chasing, us.These three were particularly persistant and followed us for quite a while. Vanessa doesn't mind potentially poisonous snakes, but get a couple of calves following her and she was like glued to me. Calves are always so cute though. Like this dude.So cute! But then he'll grow up. Anyway, the hike was really great and we had a lot of fun, even with the crazy cows!