My Sunday hike

Attack of the giant sunflowers! The garden is looking a bit ragged in late summer, but a few sunflowers are still standing tall... at least eight feet tall, that is. This isn't a cat in the Wilder Ranch paddock... Wilder Ranch gets its water by pumping it out of the creek up here. Thus the signs down at the ranch-house saying don't drink the water. Though I suspect it's just fine, it's untreated so you know they gotta say it... Here another bit of wildlife -- a mountain biker who ran into a tree, got knocked out, and now is being attended to by the park rangers and paramedics in an ambulance. Sorry I didn't get a better photo, but it was up another fork of the road and I didn't want to be in the way when the ambulance pulled back out, these are very narrow one-lane fire roads that I'm on at the moment. The wildlife is very friendly at Wilder Ranch. This is a cat that I came across in the middle of a path: Or maybe he wasn't a cat. Hmm. Okay, so maybe this is a cat: Nope? Well, anyhow, I eventually descended from the Santa Cruz Mountain foothills back to the ocean, where I found this wildlife: I think this next guy is a sea otter, because he was pounding open a clam against a rock on his chest. He was going ratatatatatat just a'pounding that sucker. Sorry I couldn't get a better picture of him, I'm way up on a cliff and my telephoto lens isn't *that* good. There were also other critters of this species frolicking just beyond the rocks but I couldn't catch a good picture of them, they were appearing and disappearing above and below water too quickly. And of course I saw lots of sea birds as I walked along the shore... And that was pretty much my 12 mile walk around the park. Other than the part about my knee deciding it didn't like me. But it's better now...

-- Badtux the Wanderin' Penguin