 Today, my daughter and I went for a short hike through Anthony Chabot and Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park. I think that we probably only hiked for one mile, in an in-and-out hike, but I saw a way to extend this nice hike for a longer loop. The Golden Spike Trail in Reinhardt Regional Park was especially pleasant, and it was fun for me to visit this part of the park for the first time.
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 I took a super enjoyable 7.9-mile loop through Windy Hill Preserve today. It was a glorious hike through a beautiful variety of forests and landscapes. It's made me wish I had explored deeper into this park before I moved away from the peninsula!
 Last weekend I went on an introductory hike to Black Diamond Mines Regional Park in Antioch. It was a very cool hike that included a first for me: I hiked through a ~160 year old tunnel driven by prospectors looking for commercial grade coal! To see more photos and read a summary of my hike, click "read more" below.
 This 4-mile loop was a longer extension of the easy 2.8-mile loop that I did last September at Morgan Territory. The trail is really peaceful and beautiful, and it was so nice to extend that route into something a little longer!
 Not this weekend, but last, I went on a really interesting 6.5-mile loop (with 1,200 ft of elevation gain!) through Las Trampas Regional Park in San Ramon. This hike offered stunning views of the entire Bay Area, wind caves, and a "box canyon" called Devil's Hole. I was surprised to see that golden poppies and sky lupine were still blooming late into October. I am glad to have done it while the skies were still clear. We are experiencing a historic wind event that is spreading wildfire in Santa Rosa and bringing smoke down to the Bay Area.
 The last time I went to Morgan Territory, I was inspired by an impressive outcropping of rocks that formed a dramatic cliff face where falcons and raptors were circling and roosting. I decided to go back to Morgan Territory to do a trail that climbed up to the top rim so that I could get a birds-eye view from the cliffs. Even though it's late summer still, the colors were decidedly autumnal: golden browns, deep reds, and faded greens. It was very beautiful, but entirely different than what I saw in the spring.
 Huckleberry Botanic Preserve is an EBRPD park in the Oakland Hills near Montclair Village. Here is the EBRPD's blurb about it: Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve is an ecological jewel. The native plant community here is found nowhere else in the East Bay. It represents a relic plant association found only in certain areas along California's coast where ideal soil and climatic conditions exist. It was really a lovely park to visit, and the self-guided nature trail is really well done!
 This 8-mile loop through Mount Diablo State Park's northern area is one of the best hikes that I have been on in recent memory. The different parts of the loop had wildly different ecosystems, which meant that every new leg of the trail offered something more. I think that this might be the tail end of the season to do this hike. Although I was lucky to see water in the waterfalls and wildflowers at every stage of the hike, it was starting to get hot. I can imagine that it would not be pleasant to do this hike in even a couple of weeks. I will have to come back here next winter or spring to do this hike again though, because it was incredible! Wildflower highlights
 To celebrate my birthday, I decided to do a 5.5-mile hike in gorgeous Morgan Territory. It was an absolutely perfect day, and I had a blast on this trail. To see LOTS more photos and to read the details of my hike click "read more."
 Sierra Azul is the largest preserve in the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD). Here is the blurb on the park from their website: Just south of the Town of Los Gatos, on the east side of the Lexington Reservoir, sits Sierra Azul, the District's southernmost open space preserve. Translated Sierra Azul means "Blue Range." Encompassing more than 18,000 acres, this is the District's largest Preserve. Sierra Azul Preserve is a true wilderness area, yet surprisingly close to the urban areas of the South Bay, making it a popular destination. Because of its size, Sierra Azul is divided into four areas: Kennedy-Limekiln, Mount Umunhum, Cathedral Oaks, and Rancho do Guadalupe. Today, I visited the Kennedy-Limekiln area for the first time. I took a loop that is just over 5 miles, and I was treated to a bay laurel forest, a mixed forest of oak and madrone, a chaparral ecosystem with manzanita and chamise (and 360-degree views of mountains), eucalyptus trees, and views of the Lexington Reservoir.
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