The Morning After, Part I

I thought I had planned carefully for yesterday's hike with my son Greg to Spanish Peak from Bucks Summit. As I left the house in a hurry, I noticed my camera battery was still on the charger and the light had stopped blinking, so it was ready. Close call. During the 15-mile drive to the trailhead, I was getting excited about what would be my longest hike to date since my hospitalization last summer. Also, Greg had told me about the abundance of wildflowers in the meadows, and where there are wildflowers there are always interesting bugs.
As we readied our day packs, I discovered that I had left my water bottles at home. :(  We managed to share Greg's water until we got to a good spring where we could filter more water and continue on. While waiting for the water prep, I found that my camera shutter was not responding. Eventually, I discovered that the problem was that I'd left my SD card at home in my laptop computer. Oh, well, no photos.  I could concentrate on hiking and hoping I could get to the summit without ill effect.
So, this morning, I was very excited to have my camera back with fully charged battery and remembering my SD card. I headed out to Feather River College to wander around and look for beautiful things to photograph.  The above Swallowtail Butterfly feeding on a thistle is just a sampler. Today I had great luck with butterflies, among other things. More photos to follow.