Leon Turnbull Photography

This past weekend our family went up north to visit the in-laws to celebrate a couple birthdays in the family. It was definitely nice to get away from home for a bit. On Saturday, I went out hiking with my son, Jadon, to this waterfall in Lassen National Forest, called Lower Deer Creek Falls. I have been here before, and although I tried, I could not really get any different kind of photo from here. The creek was flowing a bit too strong to get across it, but I did get into the middle of the stream as far as I could to take this photo. As usual, it was extremely c-c-c-c-c-old. However, after standing in the stream for awhile, my feet got numb enough such that I did not even notice the cold. haha.

Anyway, though I have been here before, I chose this spot again for a couple reasons. One, I wanted an easy enough hike that I could take Jadon on. Second, it was on the way to Chico where we were having lunch with the family afterwards, so it made perfect sense to go here. Third, I was hoping to see the California gray wolf.

California has one wolf as of right now (despite some peoples’ thoughts that there are plenty more), and currently it has been hanging out in western Plumas and eastern Tehama counties for the past couple months or so. This kind of thing interests me a lot, and I have been following its trackings on the Dept of Fish and Game website. They do not tell you exactly where it is, just a vague general area (which of course makes a lot of sense – you would not want any bad people out trying to find it to harm it, for example). I would have loved to have seen the wolf on an early morning hike, but of course the general area of eastern Tehama county is a huge area, and the odds of seeing it on this morning would be astronomical. You would have much better luck finding a needle in a haystack, literally. Indeed it would have been a miracle to see one. Well, I did pray for that miracle. I think the trouble is that my prayers were canceled out by my sons’ prayers, because he was praying that we would NOT see a wolf. And I am quite sure that God likes him much more than me. haha! Ah well, we did not see the wolf of course, but we sure did have a very nice hike together, along with our old dog, Kaya, who also made the trek with us, and I think she probably enjoyed it the best of all of us.

In other news, we are getting our first snow of the year here. Whoopie! It looks like we’ll get about 2 feet of snow or more in the mountains this week. That is pretty amazing for October. Here’s to a great winter (I hope!).