Stunning cool sunrise in the oak lowlands, not as much green around except the trees and bushes, and still a fair amount of acorn on the ground here and there. The trail dust makes deer, turkey, squirrel, and other tracks pretty easy to see. The turkeys are in the process of determining the pecking order and of separ...ating into flocks by sex, the bigger, older red-head toms are already in small groups.

You can see deer parades of does with yearlings and fawns followed by interested bucks from spike to heavy racked bucks. One doe was seen nursing a small, late born fawn; the two keeping carefully away from other deer. We walked quietly to within 30 feet of a heavy-weight buck with rut-swollen neck and impressive rack still-reddish at the base from shedding velvet; he eyed us carefully for about a minute before slowly walking off along a well-worn path through six-foot-high dried thistle stalks. Another amazing one hour morning walk at Effie Yeaw Nature Preserve on the AmericanRiver in the Sacramento suburbs.

How are things near you?

Here in the PNW, I too noticed fall is here. Yesterday we took G/F's 13 yr old niece out for a very long day (5:30 am to 8:00 pm) "in the wild" (as she worded it). During this day of walking through a large protected wetland/marsh area and hiking in the bordering mountain area that we had to acess by canoe, we seen many signs of fall.


From the marshland grasses turning brown, to flocks of ducks and geese with their extints telling them to head south to warmer climes, to a fat black bear feasting on some plants to tide him over a winters' sleep, to a Blue Heron that actually seemed to enjoy the cooler fall weather and was sunning himself with wings wide open on the water edge.

Most notably though was the sun quickly disappearing under the mountains by 6:00 pm to the west which is behind the direction of this photo. At this point, we still had a 3-1/2 mile hike on fairly easy flat ground in the quickly gathering dusk and by time we reached the car, which was parked way off in the right distance beyond this photo, it was almost complete darkness and the temperature had dropped 9 degrees. Also that mountain in the right background had a skiff of snow on it last week...too early for me!


Although very tired, Niece had a great time and made the comment that she learned more in one day about animals, plants, biology and the outdoors in general then she had ever learned in school...and thats a compliment coming from a straight A student.

Beautiful photos. Here fall/winter means things start to turn green again.

Thanks LED. We have superb outdoors country around here and we are very fortunate to live within a 30 minute to drive to most of it which makes very easy to get and enjoy the good life every chance we get.

As an aside, I forgot to mention in my original post that behind the picturesque mountains in the first photo is some very, very tough country and its in the same general area where a hiker went missing and was discussed in this recent thread.

Your mention about California turning green in the fall conjures up memories the first time I visited California some years ago. It was in the middle of April and as the airplane made endless circles over LAX and the immediate vicinity due to some problem on the ground, I was awed by how brown most of the bare land looked even from 1000's of feet in the air.

The brown is still better than the black.

The Santa Anas should be starting up soon.

Sue

A cool front moved into Houston over the weekend. 50's at night, high 70's/low 80's for the high. DW actually joined the rest of the family outside on Sunday!

-Blast

Snowed in the Sierras.

& The most phenominal of All...It Rained in Los Angeles Today!

No kidding! 1/2 inch or more. I think it broke a record. I wasn't expecting rain till maybe December.

A little more rain and we can start combining mushroom foraging with wild edible plants, fishing, and small game hunting. Open fire, wild foods, incredible night skies, yeah, that's Fall outdoors.