Pictures from the hike today

Last night I had trouble getting to sleep, and naturally overslept today. I didn't venture into the mountains...the general rule of thumb here is, if you can't get to the halfway point of your hike by noon or 1 PM, don't go. Given that I got up at 10 AM...Apollo and I went to the usual foothill park instead.

Sometimes a normally blah picture can be made interesting by using the background.
The smog over the city (beer factories yea) made this picture a little problematic to work with. I ended up with a 60s or 70s polaroid vintage feel to this picture. I don't love it, but it's interesting.

Below is a shot of the same mountain range as in the June's banner pic on the blog. Just a better weather day.

This picture in thumbnail isn't spectacular, but if you look at the large version (click on it), it becomes much more impressive in its simplicity.

The foothills here are bigger than the mountains back East. We've had so much rain that everything here is very green. It's quite a striking change. Usually by June, it starts to dry out and get brown. But I think it's good because we had such a late spring. The farmers here definitely needed the help because they had to delay their planting.