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2025 Trip Chronicles: Contents
Rancho San Antonio County Park 11/17
Purisima Creek Open Space Preserve 11/19
Rancho San Antonio County Park & Open Space Preserve is one of Santa Clara County's best-developed modern facility parks with considerable parking areas. It is about 11 miles from my residence. On Monday mid-morning of November 17, 2025, I drove to this urban park. It was another cloudy, light-breeze day with rain showers, so it offered diffuse cloud lighting.
I hiked a loop of over 7 miles with light to moderate rain falling half the time. For a second time, I wore my new hands-free umbrella setup that did an excellent job keeping my rain clothing, camera daypack, and gear relatively dry. The whole time, I carried my large tripod plus camera inside a large 3 mil plastic bag. So I was quite a bulky moving sight.
Rancho San Antonio County Park & Open Space Preserve website.
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Near the parking lot, meadows were home to wild turkeys, black-tailed deer, a cottontail rabbit, and California quail. Per the image above, along the Rogue Valley Trail, growing on a tree trunk, are orange-hued Trentepohlia algae, with moss, and a white-hued fungal species. At page right, a 1200 by 1200 pixel 100% pixels close-up of that image. The algae has a high ratio of orange carotenoid pigments to greens with its chlorophyll, which then dominates its color, resulting in orange.
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Another trunk with the same species as VE05979-06003-1x2vw.jpg above, with curving bark geometry. Most of my route (magenta track on the above map) was a loop that returned via Wildcat Canyon. It didn't offer any subjects with strong photographic aesthetics, and the rain kept me from bothering to deal with shooting any weak subjects.
At page top near the bottom of the canyon near the end of my hike, these large yellow ochre-hued mushrooms were growing out of root wood at the base of a California bay laurel tree. One can see its fallen elliptical dry leaves. Interestingly, the color is identical to that of banana slugs. Given the rains, all mossy areas were a bright green color from increased chlorophyll growth.
Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve in San Mateo County is southeast of Half Moon Bay along Higgins Canyon Road. That is about 43 miles from my residence. The preserve can also be reached via trails from Skyline Boulevard, hiking down the canyon.
Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve website.
Unfortunately, for myopic, inconsiderate economic reasons, the extensive coastal redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains to the east of San Francisco Bay were extensively logged for decades after the 1849 California Gold Rush. Inconsiderate loggers were not satisfied until forests were logged until nearly all large old-growth trees were gone. In fact, greedy loggers generally hated preservationists simply because they threatened their unrestrained economic livelihood. Preservationists only managed to save old-growth forests of what later became Big Basin State Park.
Incredibly sadly, that park that I first experienced as a young child almost totally burned in 2020 after lightning storms, because men ignorantly had, for decades, prevented fires, resulting in an unnatural heavy build-up of redwood forest undergrowth. When a wildfire occurred on August 16, 2020, during windy, hot, dry weather, it burned for 36 days with higher redwood tree burning heat levels, destroying old-growth trees that, before settlers arrived over centuries, had otherwise endured more periodic smaller fires that were quite evident as black scars on their trunks.
That sad ethic was nothing new for American settlers of The West. Surrounding Lake Tahoe, loggers sawed down nearly all trees over a vast region of its basin for Virginia City silver mines and their liquor and whorehouse towns, while other economically driven cretins put nets across spawning streams of returning-to-the-lake giant cutthroat trout, catching virtually all large spawning fish for Virginia City miner food. Further, they damned the Truckee River downstream, preventing fish from traveling between Pyramid Lake and Lake Tahoe, which eventually led to its species' virtual extinction in 1938. Another disgusting human crime against life on our planet.
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With weather forecasts showing overcast all day, at dawn on 7:15am PST Wednesday November 19, 2025, I drove for an hour to the small parking lot for 7 vehicles that was empty. Per the map, from the lot at 400-foot elevation, 3 trails route. I first hiked up the dim Wittenmore Gulch Trail that climbs 460 feet steeply over 1 mile to a stream crossing. That trail along the early morning shadowed south side, routed well above the stream in dense, view-blocking redwood forest for most of that route eastward. From the crossing with an opening in the forest canopy, I walked a bit up the stream to work the above modest 19mm lens subject with coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, bigleaf maple, Acer macrophyllum, western sword fern, Polystichum munitum, blackberry, red ozier dogwood, Cornus sericea, California huckleberry, Vaccinium ovatum, and lace lichen, Ramalina menziesii.
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A short distance further on the north side of the gulch stream, worked the above tree trunk with wet mushrooms, moss, and newly rising grasses.
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Another short ways up the trail, found this chunk of recently fallen tree trunk, probably a box elder, that had these white mushrooms along with moss and lace lichen. Note where the falling trunk knocked off moss, with roots and soil beneath.
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I continued another half mile up the steepening trail before turning around where it entered more chaparral vegetation. Along that route worked this modest 30mm subject looking down into the gulch with coast redwood, bigleaf maple, douglas fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii, tanbark oak, Notholithocarpus densiflorus, boxelder, western sword ferns, coastal wood ferns, blackberry, thimbleberry, Rubus parviflorus, and bare tree limbs showing lace lichen.
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After rambling quickly back down the trail to near the trailhead, now 3 miles into my day, I then took the much more popular Purisima Creek Trail, which is an old paved logging road running along the south side of the quite aesthetic stream that had much better water flow than usual due to the recent heavy rainstorms. In the above image, heavy debris flows show patterns on the road surface. Branches of a coast redwood frame the upper left, with a bigleaf maple at frame center and a large redwood behind it. Also beside the road, thimbleberry on the left, plus western sword fern, blackberry, and red osier dogwood.
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This next subject shows Purisima Creek at frame left and the trail at the right frame edge, coast redwood, bigleaf maple, and tanbark oak. At the lower left of the frame: redwood sorrel, Oxalis oregana, sword ferns, blackberry. Across the stream, areas of red osier dogwood, Cornus sericea, trillium, and thimbleberry. I liked the large sandstone boulder with ferns growing out of it.
For weaker subjects like this, I tend to use my somewhat soft Sigma 19mm F2.8 lens. For stronger subjects, I will multi-column row stitch blend using either my 30mm or 56mm prime lenses. I'll soon be purchasing an expensive ($919) very sharp Sigma 17mm to 40mm zoom lens that will take care of that weakness in my work.
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Above is another modest 19mm subject looking down into the stream channel with a small waterfall plus recently fallen young redwoods bridging the creek. Also, bigleaf maple, western bracken fern, western sword fern, blackberry, thimbleberry, redwood sorrel, and red ozier dogwood.
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Above is the strongest subject I found along the stream, a redwood stump dammed dual waterfall. This 30mm 2-column stitch blend was one of 3 variations I worked on. A location I'll improve on during a future visit given similar weather, maybe about the end of October when the bigleaf maples upstream are peaking before losing their bright yellow fall leaves.
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A short distance further was the above 19mm subject with coast redwood, bigleaf maple, sword fern, and blackberry. I liked lower frame right: the dark, water-absorbed redwood stump with moss and ferns growing out of its wood. Also left of the stream are giant horsetail, Equisetum giganteum, and thimbleberry bent over from higher streams flows during the recent storm. Another subject: nearly bare of leaves, bigleaf maples that will be much better in the future, earlier around the end of October.
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Another strong subject above, with a row of coast redwoods at a Purisima Creek bend and an aesthetic bigleaf maple above that will look much better a couple of weeks earlier during a future fall visit. Also giant horsetail, sword fern, red osier dogwood, thimbleberry, redwood sorrel, snowberry, blackberry.
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A final modest 19mm tree subject shows in the lower right, with fallen coast redwood needles that appear orange-red when wet. Along most of the trail, such fallen leaves are hidden beneath all the vegetation and undergrowth.
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My final subject this day, after about 6.5 miles of hiking with over 1000 feet of climbing, was this slimy Santa Cruz banana slug, Ariolimax dolichophallus, consuming greenshield lichen on a fallen branch. I saw several this wet day. It is the second-largest slug species in the world, which lives for as long as 7 years while growing to a maximum of about 12 inches long, though this guy is only about 5 inches. This slug species is hilariously the mascot for the University of California at Santa Cruz.
2025 Trip Chronicles: Contents
David Senesac
