California wildflowers

The spring time in California is an amazing time. There is such a variety of different wildflowers from spring to early summer. My girlfriend and I took a drive up to Table Mountain near Oroville Califonia today. You go up an old winding road (Cherokee Rd.) until you reach the top of the mountain. (Table mountain) The first wave of flowers is just starting to bloom. Depending on when you go there might be a whole different type blooming. I'll try to get back a couple times and catch some of the other types flowering. If you plan a trip up there, a random weekday might be best. It can get pretty busy with people coming to see the festivities. The road is very narrow and poorly maintained. Just drive slow and keep an eye out for the occasional escaped cow. These little yellow ones are an amazing color. They grow in little patches that cover parts of the mountain. It's really an impressive site to behold. Last year there was a really big fire up here, but the wildflower side of the mountain was spared. Here's another type of yellow wildflower. These were pretty tiny as well. They grew almost like a groundcover. A nice blanket of flowers coverving the mountain in different patches. It's always a treat to witness in person. You would expect to see a hobbit or two in such a magical shire. There actually has been a few bigfoot sightings in the area. The old cemetery down the road is supposed to be haunted and bigfoot has been seen there. I'll have to stop in and check that out one of these days. There is even an old covered bridge down the road left over from the gold rush. The town of Cherokee is rich in gold mining history. It's almost a ghost town now but was a major producer of gold in the past. You can still see the scars left from the early hydraulic miner's on the mountain. Hydraulic mining was like a giant firehose. They would shoot the water at the mountainside. The force from the water would blast the mountains to rubble. They would run the rubble through sluice boxes to extract the gold. An insane amount of gold was mined in this fashion until they outlawed hydraulic mining. I'm sure glad they outlawed that type of mining. These beautiful flowers wouldn't be there if they didn't. Well the flowers might be there but the mountain certainly wouldn't be. The lava capped mountain is sitting on an ancient river bed rich in gold. Oddly enough the very first diamond ever discovered in the United States came from a mine in Cherokee. I believe it was a six carat blue diamond found in a sluice box. I'll keep my eye out for one of those. Hope you enjoyed the wildflower display and a taste of the local history.