Today we headed to the Thomas F. Riley Wilderness Park for some mountain biking and wildflower hunting. In addition to several miles of hiking/biking trails, Riley Wilderness Park has a visitor’s / nature center (1 tarantula, 2 snakes, and a kids interpretive area), and a butterfly garden (which was still dormant). You can also purchase your OC Parks annual pass here. The trails are multi-use; bikes, boots and hooves but no dogs. We rode all of the trails except for Skink (Vista Point) and Horned Toad (Vista Point) and clocked about 5 miles around the park. Not a lot of miles but the hills were challenging even though I opted out on riding up to the vistas.
The word of the day is CATERPILLARS. There were caterpillars everywhere, making 'low impact' riding a challenge. I am not terribly confident on my identification of the caterpillars but the closest I could find would be Painted Lady. If anyone knows what they are (picture above), please share. We observed some interesting human behavior today on the trail. There were several families hiking and all of the little girls were trying to catch the caterpillars, pet them and take them home to love. The little boys, on the other hand, were having contests to step on as many as possible. Fortunately for the caterpillars, there were twice as many little girls than boys out hiking today.
Wildlife sightings: caterpillars. In keeping with my nature spotting ‘luck’, after 15 miles of riding around wilderness areas, the best find was at home: a raptor hunting from my backyard fence. I think it may be a kite but am not sure since I cannot find a match in my bird book.
The word of the day is CATERPILLARS. There were caterpillars everywhere, making 'low impact' riding a challenge. I am not terribly confident on my identification of the caterpillars but the closest I could find would be Painted Lady. If anyone knows what they are (picture above), please share. We observed some interesting human behavior today on the trail. There were several families hiking and all of the little girls were trying to catch the caterpillars, pet them and take them home to love. The little boys, on the other hand, were having contests to step on as many as possible. Fortunately for the caterpillars, there were twice as many little girls than boys out hiking today.
Wildlife sightings: caterpillars. In keeping with my nature spotting ‘luck’, after 15 miles of riding around wilderness areas, the best find was at home: a raptor hunting from my backyard fence. I think it may be a kite but am not sure since I cannot find a match in my bird book.
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