Although rain was predicted for Santa Rosa most of last week, the weather turned out much better than forecast. Though, we were greeted by fog when we entered California, we quickly broke into sunshine as we passed Mt. Shasta. Strangely, it wasn’t until I joined this panorama together that I realize Shasta has multiple tops. I was so accustomed to seeing it from the North that I’d never noticed the other peaks.
It was definitely spring in Santa Rosa, as the plum trees were in full blossom:
Even Mary’s primroses, seemed to herald the sunshine that greeted us:
It was still sunny Sunday, and we headed out for a bird walk of over four miles, where I saw many new birds. I’m sure all the locals must have known I was an out-of-towner when I made a fuss over getting a picture of this Snowy Egret, who was wading in the creek:
The sun even held out for Monday, when we all headed out for walk around Spring Lake, where I was greeted by even more birds that I haven’t spotted before:
This silly goose was probably a local escapee, but she seemed as happy reflecting in the sunshine as I was, and, besides she fit in well with the rest of these pictures.
Of course, we couldn’t be lucky enough to avoid all the rain. It’s not summer even in California yet, and I was caught in a couple of showers while out walking.
But we didn’t really pay a price for our luck until we started back on Saturday. We decided to drive the coast to see the Redwoods, but it was raining so hard when we got there that even Skye didn’t want to go for a walk. It got steadily worse as we headed further up the coast. We read reports that there was snow in the passes, and considering the amount of rain we didn’t want to chance that much snow. So we continued up the Oregon coast but never even bothered to get out of the car because of the heavy rain.
Luckily the Prius was a delight to drive, and knowing we were getting 45 miles per gallon even when I insisted on pushing the speed limit the whole way made the drive more enjoyable than it might have otherwise been. There’s nothing like driving 400 miles between gas stations and still adding less than 10 gallons to the tank.