Tombstone Schist

Top 5 pictures from Elly.

Middle 5 pictures by Clarence.

5 bottom pictues by Maureen

Another beautiful February day...not quite as sparkling clear as last week, but pretty wonderful...lured 8 of us back to Spenceville, where we met up with Karen. This time we did the trail where you have to climb over the gate and head to the red rocks, "tombstone schist". Clarence told us it used to lie at the bottom of an ocean and then was tilted up to their dramatic formations...they exist in the foothills from about where we were seeing them south to west of Yosemite.

The winter light makes for beautiful undulating shadows under the oaks. We discovered many other old trees - a complete old olive orchard...Akiko harvested one and she tried to spit out the taste for the next few minutes...fig trees and a dramatic thorn tree of some kind. Like last week, we shared the trail with groups of cattle. They would get separated from each other and trot along worriedly wondering if we were friend or foe. Their heavy hooves have compressed trails and left hammocks so the going can be a bit rough.

Leader, Clarence, led us around and about on canal paths and cross-country - it was like wandering through paradise. At lunch we sat by a lovely spring while enjoying the frog music. We even saw our first wild flower: a brodaia of some kind. By the time we got back to the cars, Karen was ready to go home. She dispersed a bucket of oranges from her trees (very delicious) and the rest of us went back over the gate for more hike. We wanted to see Clarence's geocaches because one of them had something called a "Japanese Peso". Akiko had certainly never heard of that and it was peaking our curiosity. The first one was in a group of rocks and Clarence hadn't been able to find it the last time he tried. John found it: a large painted plastic bottle with the usual instructions and a place to sign in. It contained a million dollar bill, plastic toys, and some rocks. We donated a packet of emergency-C and were on our way to number two. That one was a small plastic container. But it was number 3 that held the Japanese Peso. We found it and marvelled but were clueless. Well, mystery is solved: Wikipedia says they were issued by the Japanese during their WWII occupation of the Philippines. They were pretty worthless then: you needed 75 of them to buy one duck egg. In 1944, 100 of them bought a box of matches.