It's my Wednesday afternoon off. We loaded up and came up to the park. Took Gazos Creek Road to the Middle Ridge Trail. Bella is feeling kind of slow and tired. We've been doing some pretty big and difficult trails in the last week, so I understand her reluctance to go zooming through the woods. It's also a warm afternoon, so after we get up to this ridge, we take it easy the rest of the trip.

Here's the ridge near the overlook on the Middle Ridge Trail (again). It's such a stark contrast to the deep woods we just climbed out of.

View of the canyon leading down to the ocean. The fog is back at the coast.

Path going up to the overlook. I still haven't tried to lead Bella up this trail, but that's okay.

There's some lovely bushes in bloom. Not sure what this plant is, might be Scotch Broom, an invasive plant.

Whatever the plant is, the honey bees were loving it.

Going northward out of this clearing and into another bunch of trees

This is the gate just after the intersection with the Hollow Tree Trail (no horses allowed). We stayed on the Middle Ridge Trail.

Not too far from that gate, we made a left turn onto Johansen Road. This is the northern boundary of the state park and a nicely maintained road.

Not too far up the road was another gate. The road is a horse trail, so we continued around the gate.

Just the other side of the gate is a very nice overlook. Bella looked down into the canyon.

This little rock outcropping just added an interesting touch to the perfectly wild landscape.

What an unusual shape; sort of reminded me of a long-eared dog lying down.

And this is the south view from the road just west of the gate.

Bella is hot and sweaty

Most of this road ran through the woods.

There were a couple of nice sized redwoods along the road

One more viewpoint along the road

Looking west down the canyon toward the beach

Fog at the beach

Someone has a big house near the top of the ridge across the canyon.

We turned around because it was getting late, and went back to this spot where I noticed a bird perched on the top of the tree on the right. I think it was a mourning dove.

Bird on top of the tree

Going back down the road

This is still the Johansen Road

Here we are back on the Middle Ridge Road. I was looking across the canyon to the east and realized that the sliprock granite that is *over there* is probably what we rode through a week ago Saturday on the Basin Trail. We probably rode that whole ridge.

The ridge to the northeast

The ridge to the east

Going through the woods, we could see a ridge to the south through a space between the trees

Is this clearer?

Or this? Some sunlight was filtering through

I just like the way these redwoods are growing on both sides of the road

Here's the over view at 1675 feet above sea level, a telephoto picture of the fog as it thickens and gets ready to march up the canyon and then pour into the San Lorenzo Valley

It's already getting hazy

The setting sun leaves long shadows - we are still a good 45 minutes from the trailer

So we better not mess around taking pictures of the darkening forest - sunset tonight will come early if the fog comes in. We got back to the trailer at 7:00, left the park around 7:25 and got back to the ranch at 7:45, and then had to feed and clean by lantern light, something we'll be doing for the next six months as the days keep getting shorter.