(NO) Waterfalls Trail Loop, Mt. Diablo

 A lot of these pictures you can play "Where's Brian?" with . 

 That hill was covered with wild flowers, more than just yellow, but yellow is all the camera picked up.

 Here's some pretty purple ones.

 Brian is in the above, and below pictures.  We round the corner of the hill we're on and head back into the valley that is behind there.  That is where the waterfalls would normally be.

 Above, he's a little below center of the picture, all you cans see are arms, legs, and head.

 No waterfalls really, but any water we did get to was a gift! It was very hot, we rinsed off and wet down our shirts at each water hole.

 That was a doozy of a short, steep, loose gravel downhill!

 I'm really not sure what all I touched running through here, but we rinsed off good once we got through this section.

 Above - a Wild White Bush.  Below, getting too hot!

 A few more Gopher Snake pictures.  Man, this was a pretty snake! After I was done getting pictures, I tried to flick his tail to get him to move, instead he started rattling it in the grass. Smart move, but he didn't fool me. I do think it's pretty cool that they've learned to pretend to be rattlers as a defense mechanism, though.

 It's not fun anymore. : ) I don't do 90's and grassland.

It felt like we finished this running across the surface of the sun. I loath having to finish runs with crossing the grass lands!!  We knew the whole run that the last 1.5 miles was going to be harder than the climbing earlier in the morning, just because there is zero cover and that dirt radiates the heat back up into your face.  All in all, it was a treat to get Brian out on the mountain. This was his first run of any kind in over a month.  He had gotten some random infection in the lymphatic channel in his leg - as in it hurt, was swollen, and he had a bright red line up the inside of his leg.  So that took it's toll, and time, to work out.  BUT, we have  a few exciting runs coming up, and we're getting back at it!