A couple of months ago I signed up for a 6 hour long truck tour in the mountains right behind us. It’s an area that is not open to the public, but the Irvine Ranch Conservancy organizes programs there that you can attend. I was very excited about this truck tour, but unfortunately it had to be cancelled due to rainy weather. Luckily, I was able to sign up for a different day for a 4-hour long tour on June 8th.

The group met Donna, our driver, and the other 4 volunteers at the Augustine Staging area, where we started our trip on this truck:

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Since early spring I have been posting lots of wildflower images in my blog. After my last hike, where I learned the names of many of the flowers I decided, that I would make one more post showcasing the beautiful wildflowers we are lucky to experience this spring. I really hope that our winters will be as wet in the future as the last one was, and we’ll enjoy the flowers again in coming years.

Some of the photos I’ve already posted, others are new. I will label all of them this time. Please be warned: there are a lot of flower pictures in this post. 🙂

Let’s start with the California Poppy. This was one of the first flowers to bloom, and I still saw a few today.

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On Saturday my husband and I enjoyed another wonderful hike. We only had to drive 5 minutes to the trail head, and after about an hour or so hike we reached a lookout point from where we were presented with the above view. This is called The Sink – I believe this one is the West Sink. We didn’t have time to hike another mile to see the East Sink, but we’ll try to do that next time. These are natural sandstone formations, which are sometimes referred to as Orange County’s miniature Grand Canyon. Here are a few images from our hike.

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