Wildflowers in the Gold Country

For Mother's Day, a visit to mom and dad's house in the Sierras was imperative. It's less than a three hour drive away from San Francisco and one of my favorite places to go. We enjoyed a great Mother's Day brunch at the Grill, which used to be the Pine Mountain Lake Country Club. It was an awesome spread with Belgian waffles, slices of fresh and hot beef and ham, lots of bacon and sausage, and later on, fresh pasta cooked while I waited. Almost the whole family came and enjoyed it heartily.

We ended up spending a beautiful afternoon looking at wild flowers on Old Ward's Ferry Road, a winding one lane drive through the picturesque hills. When I was small, my parents accidentally drove up this road seeing it as a fairly direct route between Groveland and the nearest shopping town, Sonora. They tell fond stories of Oma, who was visiting from comparatively flat Wisconsin, leaning into the middle of the car as they swung around corners, her side of the car feeling as though it were hanging off the edge of a cliff. My mom, who is currently about the same age as Oma was then, proclaimed that she understood why Oma would do that as my dad careened down the road.

Here are just a few pics from that journey.