Sugarloaf Ridge

This weekend we went camping at Sugarloaf Ridge in Sonoma. It's a cute little campground with about 50 sites, all set round a meadow that deer bravely run across every evening around dusk. There were also tons of frogs, crickets, wild turkeys(!?) and birds to be seen as you walked around. We arrived on Saturday around 5, after a few hours of traffic (boo) and a stop at The Girl and the Fig where Levi claime he had the best burger of his life (yay). He was still talking about it on Sunday, so I think he's telling the truth. Thanks for the suggestion, Mom!

On Sunday morning we woke up and started out on the hike up Bald Mountain. I had directions for a nice little loop, just over 5 miles, great for a day hike. We were going to take it slow and just enjoy the wonderful scenery like you see here, of mountians, birds, clouds etc.

Then we saw a tarantula! Can you see him? He's really well camoflauged, but he's a big guy.
We reached the top after about an hour, took a lunch break and checked out the view. You can see to the Sierras from the top of Bald Mountain!

Then we decided to head back to camp. We had some really gorgeous views of mountains, like you see here.

I was also amazed by the HUGE wishies that were growing around the top of the mountain.

After a while we ran into a dead end. Whoops! Turns out we took the wrong trail and had gone a mile and a half in the wrong direction. So then we had to hike all the way back UP to get to the top, where we had just been, then go back down the correct way. So we added an extra 3 miles to our day, and as Levi said, "We made it to the top, going uphill both ways!" We look happy here, but this was before the wrong turn...

We made it back and were totally famished! Levi cooked spaghetti while I got this shot of the sunset. It was really beautiful, and a bit of calm at the end of our long day.

Overall it was a really fun weekend, and only an hour and a half away (without traffic) but a real getaway compared to the usual weeks in the city. Fun!