Wildflowers

So the fire is long out, though there are still a lot of fire crews around, mostly clearing burned brush and things like that I believe. There's a big black/gray scar on the mountains over town, it's much more visible from a distance than the previous fire. I'm going to take a bike ride up into the burned zone someday soon when it's foggy (otherwise it'd be really hot up there!).

In late April Danielle and I went up to see the last of the wildflowers at Figueroa Mountain, which is about an hour North of Santa Barbara ... we passed the entrance to Michael Jackson's now infamous Neverland ranch just before getting to the park.

As I mentioned before, Spring and flowers happen very differently in California then say the Northeast, Europe or Minnesota ... the first flowers start showing up at the end of January really, and February and March are really the Spring months. It was always an incredible contrast coming back to California from Minnesota for Spring break in late March. By that point here, some of the flowers have already done their thing, all the trees are fully green, etc ... while in Minnesota, the snow is starting to melt and everything is still dead an getting really muddy.

So, since we were a little late to the flower party, we had to go to the very top (~4k feet) of this mountain where the air is cooler to see the end of the wildflower display. The state budget cuts were fully apparent, as there didn't seem to be any rangers or anything in the state park and there sure weren't many signs either. We eventually found the flowers and they sure didn't disappoint!

Click to see the slideshow.

Wildflowers