Some animals along the way..

Here are a some of the animals I see along the way on my hikes...

And some more animals..

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Mt. Diablo

On this memorial day 2005, I drove to Mt. Diablo for a nice hike. The weather was great, not too hot but very sunny. I parked my car on Regency Dr, in Clayton and from there I started my hike.

First I hiked for about 1.5 mile over the Donner Canyon trail. This part of the hike was a wide and easy trail with quite some people on it since it was the main entrance of the park. Then after half a mile on Cardinet Oaks Road I took the narrow Falls Trail. This was a great trail (although quite steep at times) that crossed many little feeder waterfalls. Also it had some gorgeous views. Along the way I saw many many butterflies, lots of beautiful flowers and again a big snake. Seems like I run into them constantly this spring. Still have not been able to take a good picture of it. They are too fast. After the Falls Trail I continued on Middle Trail, this part of the trail slowly takes you out of the canyon again and via Meridian Ridge Road I returned to the Donner Canyon Road and traced my steps back to the car. If I lived closer I would hike here many times for sure.

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April showers bring May flowers!

Once again the old saying proved to be right. The abundant rain we had in april definitly brought an abundance of flowers this month. This picture I took on the "anniversary trail" on Windy Hill. This is one of my favorite places to hike. And today with the incredible nice weather I hiked there for about 7 miles (2 hours). I took Spring Ridge trail to Anniversary trail and back via Hamms Gulch trail. (I found a description of this exact hike here)
Usually I see on windy hill every time one or two new animals that I have never seen there before. In the past I've seen rabbits, deer, coyotes, humming birds, snakes, hares, prairy dogs, woodpeckers, lizzards and others. Once I even got a glimpse of either a bobcat or a young mountain lion. But this time I had less eye than usual for all the beauty that nature brings here, because I brought with me the the audio book "Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown that I was listening to on my mp3 player during the hike. But luckily, even though the book caught most of my attention, these beautiful flowers I did not oversee.

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"My Daddy, Mine!"

Sydney is today almost 2 years and 4 months old, and we spend some good time in the park in San Mateo again. Sydney knows very well what is hers.. so when another little girl just happen to come close to me she had to tell her "That is my daddy, mine!" Of course I couldn't suppress a little smile and couldn't feel more proud.

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That's Life I guess..

After popping up at my frontdoor and garage several times over the last year, I found him dead today. He did not look good the evening before when he (or is it a she?) was just sitting at my garage door, but this evening he choose to die on my front porch. So I made him a little "stone" and then I tossed him away.
It's been a weird day.. earlier I tried to brake for a squirrel that slowly crossed a 55Mph road.. and when I passed it and looked in my rear mirror, I did not see anything hopping away.. so I guess that one died too.
Well that's life I guess.. at least it was.   

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Kingdom of Heaven

It doesn't happen very often to me that I get to see a movie before it is on the big screen in the US, but this one I got to see in Filmstaden i Sundsvall, Sweden where the movie premiered 2 days (+time difference) before it premiered in the US.
It would be hard to avoid comparing Kingdom of Heaven and Gladiator since both were created by the same director but Kingdom of Heaven just didn't have the same appeal.
The main flaw I think was that Balian was not as charismatic a character as Maximus. This meant a less of an emotional attachment to the film. If they had casted another actor for the role of Balian, it might have created a complete different picture.

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