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2023 Trip Chronicles: Contents
San Luis Reservoir Wildlife Refuge 3/27
San Luis Reservoir Wildlife Refuge 3/31
San Luis Reservoir Wildlife Refuge 4/1
San Luis Reservoir Wildlife Refuge 4/5
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The above modest blue oak savanna subject, a 4-column focus stack and stitch blend, within the San Luis Reservoir Wildlife Refuge, was the first time I used my Sony A6000 during 2023. Before sunrise Monday, March 27, 2023, I drove the 60 miles from San Jose to Pacheco Pass that is against the heavy morning commute. At 8am, the sun's altitude is too low to illuminate off-angle vegetation well, and it shows herein. Grasses were also wet with dew, causing a contrast-lowering white cast. The large tree on frame left is a blue oak, Quercus douglasii, as is the partial one on the right that is just leafed out with bright yellow-green leaves. Behind it is an old California buckeye, Aesculus californica. Among small wildflowers visible amid grasses are California violet, shooting stars, blue dicks, bicolor lupine, popcorn flower, lace pod, tomcat clover, white seablush, fiddleneck, filaree.
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Over the morning, I worked a few more subjects in the refuge before a short venture into adjacent, empty of vehicle visitors, Pacheco Pass State Park. There, I worked on a slope dense with California violets, aka johnny-jump-ups, Viola pedunculata, that mainly sprout from networks of rhizome roots. Also visible were Padre's shooting star, Primula clevelandii, aka Mt Diablo shooting stars, blue dicks, bicolor lupine, and filaree. I could see green herbs of many wildflowers just about to flower, so now quite enthused, I made plans to return on any following days with low-breeze weather forecasts.
At page top was my last subject this day, and the strongest. An excellent foreground of California poppy, Eschscholtzia californica, California violet, Mt Diablo shooting stars, blue dicks, Dichelostemma capitatum, popcorn flower, bicolor lupine, tomcat clover, Trifolium willdenovii, fiddleneck, filaree, with a background of the huge San Luis Reservoir, filled to capacity. The reservoir was surrounded by lushly green blue oak savanna grassland. The San Joaquin Valley north of Los Banos is in the hazy distance. California poppies are rather limited and spotty in this pass zone, so this subject was exceptional. I only attempted a single frame because breezes were increasing at the time, so I was barely able to get in enough focus stack shots. Most water in vast San Luis Reservoir is pumped uphill from O'Neill Forebay that is fed by the California Aqueduct. During evenings, water can be released, generating electrical power.
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I returned four days later to San Luis Reservoir Wildlife Refuge on Friday, March 31, 2023. My first subject was moss, lichen, and the unusual trentepohlia algae on a shaded coast live oak trunk. Trentepohlia aurea is a species of filamentous terrestrial green alga with a worldwide distribution. It is common at Pacheco Pass on ridgeline coast live oaks' damp, shaded trunks, which provide colorful subjects if one bothers to explore under their canopies; on windy sites, branches drape down to ground level in order to force wind to flow above and over canopies, not under.
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At the east end of the main loop trail out of the small free parking lot opposite the state park entrance, there are some excellent areas of early-season wildflowers most springs. In fact, the earliest ones you will find in the San Francisco Bay Area region. Above, amidst blue oaks and a coast live oak, are California violet, California goldfields, Lasthenia californica, Mt Diablo shooting stars, blue dicks, popcorn flower, bicolor lupine, tomcat clover, fiddleneck, lace pod, poison sanicle, white fiesta flower, and filaree. This year, given the rainfall pattern and cool temperatures delaying growth, there were fewer shooting stars because the species normally peaks in early March.
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A view across glowing backlit goldfields, California violet, Mt Diablo shooting stars, blue dicks, tomcat clover, white seablush, bicolor lupine, filaree. I positioned my tripod to make the back row of shooting stars stand out against shaded blue oaks and California buckeyes.
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This view is northwestward across miles of blue oak and coast live oak savanna grasslands. Just beyond the blue oak at frame center, terrain slopes down out of view; noisy with semi-trucks is the 4-lane SR152 highway. In the grasses at 9am, half-open California poppy, California violet, Mt Diablo shooting stars, blue dicks, bicolor lupine, tomcat clover, fiddleneck, and filaree. Beyond the highway in the distance, private cattle range lands would make a superb future addition to the state park.
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Visible within this image are popcorn flower, Plagiobothrys nothofulvus, bicolor lupine, Lupinus bicolor, fiddleneck, Amsinckia intermedia, blue dicks, Dichelostemma capitatum, California violet, goldfields, and filaree.
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The next day was forecast with lighter breezes so on Saturday morning April 1, 2023 drove back. A dense patch of California goldfields, Lasthenia californica, California violet, Mt Diablo shooting stars, blue dicks, tomcat clover, white seablush, Plectritis macrocera, bicolor lupine, and filaree. Note the blue waters of San Luis Reservoir between branches frame mid-left. An example landscape showing why I consider areas of Pacheco Pass to have the best spring wildflowers in the San Francisco Bay Area region.
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A small ephemeral marshy area with algae reflecting blue skies with coast live oak, Quercus agrifolia, California poppy, California violets, Mt Diablo shooting stars, blue dicks, bicolor lupine, butter and eggs, and lomatium.
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This area, with some of the best dense wildflowers in the refuge, is just beyond the parking lot off to the right up the hill of the loop trail. In this view are coast live oak, California poppy, California violet, Mt Diablo shooting stars, blue dicks, popcorn flower, bicolor lupine, fiddleneck, and filaree. Although the small bicolor lupine are dense, the downsized image so blends them with green vegetation that they are barely visible. In the enlarged vertical slice view, at 50% pixels, the lupine are easily visible.
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This was shot near the above TX02395-02456-3x1v image and is the best area with California poppy I've found in the Pacheco Pass area. At the hilltop are coast live oaks. Wildflowers include the pink-hued checker mallow, Sidalcea malviflora, California violet, Mt Diablo shooting stars, blue dicks, popcorn flower, bicolor lupine, fiddleneck, and filaree.
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An intimate landscape of white fiesta flower, Pholistoma membranaceum, growing beside a mossy blue oak trunk. This shade-loving, densely tangling species is common beneath both blue and coast live oaks.
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An aesthetic Coastal Range marine sandstone Neogene Period lichen-covered outcrop with California poppy, California violet, popcorn flower, blue dicks, bicolor lupine, and filaree.
Six days after my second Pacheco Pass visit Saturday, I drove down again on Wednesday, April 5, 2023 while expecting that would be enough time for many of the herbs I saw to flower. Indeed, wildflowers at many park slopes were near peak, but breezes were too strong, so I just enjoyed some fun at a secret streamside spot at San Luis Reservoir Wildlife Refuge before driving home.
Precipitation during our 2023 rainy season was well above normal. However, in the San Francisco Bay region, it was not as high as what fell in the Sierra Nevada range or coastal Central and Southern California, which has made national news. The cooler-than-normal late winter remarkably delayed vegetation bud/flower/seed cycles throughout the state by about 2 weeks. April became the new March. On March 27, I made my first local regional trip to check conditions in the Pacheco Pass region, which I consider to have the best wildflower displays in the region after wet winters. The last year of a large bloom was 2015, when there was actually also more rain:
https://www.davidsenesac.com/2015_Trip_Chronicles/spring_2015-1b.html
That was also the peak of vibrant spring greenery but before most wildflowers rose. Note the green hills on image at page top. Over the next couple of weeks, as wildflowers increasingly exploded, I drove the 60 miles south during 5 early mornings that produced some fine blue oak savanna landscapes on these first two web pages. At the same time, reports of rising wildflowers were showing on DesertUSA dot com, the old Calphoto enthusiast website, and on news websites, with lots of photography enthusiasts excited. On April 5, I did a one-day conditions-checking road trip south on US101 to Paso Robles, west on SR58 into Shell Creek, west to Carrizo Plain, south on Elkhorn Road a few miles, then north on Bittercreek Road, before continuing north on I5. I took no A6000 photos, just a few ELPH190 shots, as I was not impressed with what I saw. I reported on the web that northern Carrizo and the Temblor Range were not likely to be impressive.
After spending the night sleeping inside my Forester at the San Luis Reservoir Wildlife Refuge parking lot, I worked at the wildlife refuge. A week later, given a low-breeze weather forecast, I gambled on the first of two trips south to the southern Carrizo and SR166 Cuyama River zones that had been a mystery without reports but for which I had a bit of positive information. The spectacular work from those two successful trips is on subsequent pages 3 and 4. Because the flower cycles were delayed into April, the higher-altitude sun-clear days quickly pushed plants through their cycles, leaving short peak blooming periods for best aesthetic conditions. Note on each page, I usually only add Latin species names or bolded common names once. Wildflower listings are dependent on what I can see at 100% pixels that may not be discernible with these small, downsized-for-web images but will be once I begin publicly exhibiting full images on large 8k displays. It is such a joy to physically experience such colorful landscapes in person beyond what any 2-dimensional photographs can render.
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2023 Trip Chronicles: Contents
