The Nakai Pack!     & Armstrong Woods

After the sunset at Moss Beach, I continued driving north along Hwy 1, through San Francisco. Now, normally driving through San Francisco at rush hour on a Thursday evening would not be the smartest thing to do, but I decided if traffic got really bad, I could just pull over and get something to eat. Turns out that traffic was pretty light and outside a few slowdowns I was able to get to the Golden Gate Bridge and across in less than an hour. Continuing north on 101 to Santa Rosa there continued to be no problems so I was able to make it there in just a couple hours.

The next morning Linda and I drove over to Armstrong Woods. I decided to go out hiking first before visiting the boys just because I'd rather catch the afternoon light with the Nakai pack and I was also hoping to catch some fog in the woods. Well, I was disappointed by yet another sunny day. Oh well. It had been overcast, rainy, downright miserable the past few weeks here and I'd much rather have a sunny day than rain, but still, I was hoping to photograph the woods in the fog, or at least have some clouds to soften harsh sunlight. But, I made do.

Like Big Basin, Armstrong Woods was pretty much deserted. There were a few more people here, but not many. We dedicated to take a short hike, but the only short path was, well, pretty much straight up hill! My flatland Indiana legs were not amused. Linda's even less so. She ended up not making it to the top which was about a half mile up a 20 to 30 degree or so incline. The photos do not do this path justice, it was quite steep. Well, despite the sunlight, it was quite beautiful up here and the reward at the top was, well, quite rewarding ;-) Of course this was just the beginning of a 3 1/2 mile hike and that was just one way so rather than spend the entire day walking the woods, and of corse making Linda wait hours at the car, I just went a little further and took some really cool photos of trees including a madrone with a patch of light illuminating the orange bark. I also took quite a few of trees covered in moss. This close to the ocean there is a lot of fog which keeps things quite moist here. I guess you could almost consider this a fog forest, but alas, no fog. Well, maybe next year...

When we got back to Chris's Linda and I went in and visited the pack. Koka, who does not get along at all with Denali, was in the holding pen so I did not get any photographs of her, but I did manage to get quite a few of the other three.

When I went in the gate, Nakai, who I'm guessing is over 150 pounds now, ran up and was so excited he peed like a puppy. Fortunately he did not roll over to do this ;-)

Though big, Nakai can still jump and Linda brought in some treats for them to jump for! Tossing treats in the air to catch is always a fun game.

Konah was also pretty excited. He used to be quite shy, but today he kept coming over to me and let me pet him quite a bit. He also did some cute bowing and racing about the pen all rooty kazooty. Linda brought them a tennis ball container which Konah also ran about with. He was such a goof.

Chris also has cats. Later than evening when everybody else had gone to bed, the cats were all cuddled up together on a chair. I could not resist getting a photo.
 

The North Coast