Rock Creek Trail

On January 4th, David and I decided to walk the Rock Creek Trail. It was a grey and chilly day -- even bundled up with many layers, the wind was pretty brutal on the walk to the trailhead.

The beginning of the trail. Oregon in winter. The ground is green with grass and moss, and although many of the trees are bare of leaves, they're still green because the branches are covered in moss!

Interestingly, our walk was punctuated by animals that I didn't get photographs of. As we entered the wetlands area, we disturbed a huge great blue heron, which flew off down the creek. When we reached the end of the trail (the turning around point), we saw a gigantic nutria, which quickly slipped back through the brush to the water.

We'll have to return in the summer and see what this marshy area looks like then.

The puddles all had ice around the edges.

A rabbit! It was hard to get a photo because the rabbit was almost invisible on the view screen.

At this point we had just crossed under Highway 26 and reached the turning around point at Rock Creek Boulevard, where we saw that nutria up close. We turned around and yet again saw the rabbit, who had reemerged in our brief absence.

This is the largest wild rabbit I've seen. Much bigger than the wild rabbits of San Diego and Arizona. :)

As we headed back, we started to see little white flakes. Those flakes got bigger and more frequent, until:

It's snowing again!

You can see some interesting snowflake patterns, if you look closely.

Our return to the car. The snowfall, combined with the wind that was still blowing along the road, meant that my coat was white by the time we got here.

A light dusting.