Hood Mountain Adventure

There is a Regional park called Hood Mountain at the top of the road by our house. We drove the five miles up there before we moved to see what it was like, and what we found was that it was closed, gated and padlocked with a sign said that it was scheduled to reopen in December. It is a narrow, windy potholed drive and another frustrated driver (with his dog in the back of the car) told us that they were fixing a washout in the road which had happened several years before. Since there is a large sign at the bottom of the road, it seemed logical to both of us that a CLOSED sign over it would be easy enough, saving everybody the drive up there, and the necessity of turning around at a very narrow dead end.

The park finally reopened last week, a fact we learned via the grapevine, and we decided to go up there and explore. There was a sign informing us that dogs should be on a leash, but since we were the only people there, we decided to disregard it, and Ozzie ran happily off down the trail. It's rugged territory, steeply up and down, studded with oak trees and open grassy meadows with butterflies and, today, a flawless blue sky Just as it was beginning to feel hot, we reached the Santa Rosa Creek (the same one that runs by across the street from our house). OilMan skipped across the rocks, Ozzie chased sticks through it and I fell in it. It was a longer, hotter walk back up the hill to the car....

There is a trail all the way to the top of Hood Mountain, which OilMan and His Lordship considered doing until OilMan fell off the ladder. Perhaps when we have both recovered from our bruises, we will consider it again....

As a delightful counterpoint to the morning's travails, we went with Dana and her friend to St. Francis winery , a couple of miles down the road, where we sat on the terrace, sipped Sauvignon Blanc accompanied by a cheese platter, and enjoyed the view of Hood Mountain. In my book, a preferable, if less intimate way, of seeing it.