Eagle Canyon - Again; and Spider - Again

Sage brush along the path

Sept 27th:  Steph and I have a hiking date every Wednesday.  But this week we moved it to Thursday - today.  She was interested in going to Eagle Canyon because it is practically in her back yard (about 5 miles), but she had never been there.  So, that is where we went. 

Since there are many trails in that part of the foothills and none of them are marked, we were happy to have the trip map from the same hike last week from Marla on Steph's "fancy" phone - via the Trimbel Outdoors App.



It was a beautiful day - the sage  brush was in bloom - we got yellow pollen on our arms and clothing - the fragrance was awesome.  This is in stark contrast to last week's hike to Eagle Canyon where we could almost "taste" the smoke from the Karney fire, near Robie Creek.

We had several "wildlife" encounters - snake, spider, quail. 



Steph, K, at Eagle Canyon

There was a little tiny snake taking in the rays in the middle of the dirt road - it didn't think it needed to move just because we were walking down the path towards it.  I didn't know snakes could get used to people like squirrels and deer do.




We also saw a very colorful spider - yellow head, orange body, with black legs.  Per the internet, it seems to be a Jumping Spider.  There was a similar kind in Sri Lanka that was all black.  As kids we called them pop-pop spiders, I think it may started as hop-hop spiders and then morphed to pop-pop spiders - but I think that was just our family's name for them, and not a standard Sri Lankan name.


Tiny snake on the dirt path we were hiking on