Memories of 2/11/12

I'll post two more sets of photos from last Saturday's outing to Bear Creek Falls, before returning my attention to the Quincy area.  There's no unifying theme other than the fact they were all aesthetically pleasing to me and represent different elements of an ecosystem that I love.  Being a little canyon within a canyon, we find elements of the transition zone that runs up to several thousand feet higher in elevation and the foothill zone than runs around 1,500 feet lower. 
The top photo was one of the more attractive arrangements of dewdrops I saw that morning.  One could easily have spent the morning here photographing dewdrops in all kinds of settings.  The next photo is of a branch of California Bay Laurel with buds.  This is a tree I got used to calling Pepperwood when I lived in the Coastal Range where there's also a town by that name.  Then we have two views of a Banana Slug, one in hand and one moving across our path.  It was too cold to extend the eye stalks, but apparently didn't need to see in order to choose a path to crawl.  We first saw it on the way up to the falls.  I took a photo of it in my hand, then put it back where I found it at the edge of the path.  About an hour later, on our return trip, we found it about 6 inches from the spot where we left it.  In between those two sightings, I found a common garden-variety slug on a bed of moss.