The Golden State
So we're out hiking with the dogs and we come around a bend in the mountain and there is something orange on the hillside in the distance, through the trees. It's near sunset and it looks almost like fire. Steph says, "are those poppies?" and I say, "no way. That's too orange. It looks like safety vest orange... like CalTrans orange."
We keep walking and after a while I raise my 70-300 to my eye, take a picture, and zoom in on the camera's LCD. By then it was pretty clear we were looking at poppies... a firey mountain of California Golden poppies...acres upon acres of them. I took this shot when we finally got even with them, as the sun was just about spent.
It's said that California is called the Golden State not because of the gold rush, but because these poppies, the state flower, used to cover most of the entire state in golden creamy goodness every spring. Ships at sea used to admire them growing on the flanks of the San Gabriel mountains, 25 miles inland. There are fewer of them now and a lot more sprawl, but maybe that makes seeing fields of them even more of a treat.
The Golden State
So we're out hiking with the dogs and we come around a bend in the mountain and there is something orange on the hillside in the distance, through the trees. It's near sunset and it looks almost like fire. Steph says, "are those poppies?" and I say, "no way. That's too orange. It looks like safety vest orange... like CalTrans orange."
We keep walking and after a while I raise my 70-300 to my eye, take a picture, and zoom in on the camera's LCD. By then it was pretty clear we were looking at poppies... a firey mountain of California Golden poppies...acres upon acres of them. I took this shot when we finally got even with them, as the sun was just about spent.
It's said that California is called the Golden State not because of the gold rush, but because these poppies, the state flower, used to cover most of the entire state in golden creamy goodness every spring. Ships at sea used to admire them growing on the flanks of the San Gabriel mountains, 25 miles inland. There are fewer of them now and a lot more sprawl, but maybe that makes seeing fields of them even more of a treat.