Ray, Ken and I Go For a Hike Through the Redwood Trees To Pond Farm

Thursday April 26, 2018 Guerneville CA.

Nice day for a hike

Ken and Ray were coming by today to go for a hike up through Armstrong State Park to Pond Farm.

They arrived about 11 and after shooting the bull for awhile we took off up the road from my house to the park, about a quarter of a mile.

Armstrong Redwoods State Park

Here we are just entering  the park.

We entered the redwood tree area and took the road to the right.

Going through here.

We made some remarks about the things we could see in the base of this big redwood tree that we passed by.

This is looking up at that big tree. This one is likely over 1500 years old and not really one of the larger ones I’ve seen. The largest one I’ve seen in this area is about 24 feet in diameter. That’s a big tree.

Shortcuts to Pond Farm

I diverted off the roads and took some shortcuts I knew about as we headed for Pond Farm.

We had to duck under this old fir tree that fell across the trail.

Headed for the pond

I took this other shortcut that heads to the pond.

The pond is actually two little ponds. Here’s what it looked like as we approached the smaller one.

This is the pond that makes this place Pond Farm.

The larger section has a little island on it. The kid that used to live here had a little wooden raft and he’d take you to the island. It barely floated. Ray said he’d been on the island on the raft. I’d been there too and the kid took the raft back to shore and said ha, ha, you’re stuck on the island. I threatened to tell his dad that he’d killed one of the ducks on the pond with a rock and he came and got me. That was all a long time ago.

Nathan’s garden

From the pond we  headed over to Nathan’s house and entered into his garden through the back gate.

He has quite a garden with hundreds of roses among other things.

I called out to let him know we were there, but I didn’t get an answer. It turned out he wasn’t home so we took a quick tour through his garden.

One of his roses.

Lunch break

We left his place and stopped here by the creek to have lunch and take a bit of a break.

East Ridge Trail home

After lunch we took what they call the East Ridge Trail which goes down the ridge to the park’s main parking lot and if you know where to turn off it, you end up at my house which we did.

Here’s a small piece of the East Ridge Trail we hiked on.

We made it back to my house. About a five or six mile hike. We were all beat. Ray took off for home and Ken left for home shortly and I went in for a nap.

After my nap I spent the rest of the day chair hopping and enjoying the evening in my yard.

That was my day for a nice one and I got some exercise too.