Fernandez Ranch - July '26 

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On Weds., July 1, eight of us drove to historic Fernandez Ranch, about 4 miles east of I-80 (on hwy 4) from Pinole.  The group first hiked here two years ago, and today walked part of the same trail backwards plus tried a different route.  

All of us were fortunate to have enjoyed a cooler-than-usual summer so far, and today was no exception. The coolish ground breezes when we first started out, coming off nearby San Pablo Bay, had me putting a nylon shirt on, but the steepness of the initial climb warmed us all up pretty quickly

	the start		Frank's group photo		Max in the lead
		after a long uphill, a steep downhill		Frank & Jean
	thistle field		artichoke thistle
		'home on the range'		enough shade for lunch
	on the way back down		Sandra with Fiddle doc		Andrew & Sandra
		thistle-mania		in good scenery

At the furthest west part of the walk, we had to walk about a mile through a field dense with star-thistle or larger thistles, plus other weeds up to 5 feet high. The worst aspect of the trail was its tendency to vanish; this was a grey-colored old cow track, along a barbed-wire fence. Over time cows churn the ground to be very uneven, so there was continuous ankle-twisting potential, for 30 minutes, but everyone got through ok. 

The official trail today via AllTrails is called Franklin Canyon via Woodmill and Goat Road Loop, which is 6.3 miles & 1,354 ft of gain, but we cut off the Goat Road Loop, making the overall walk about 5 miles, with a gain of 900 ft. 

Attendees (as shown on photio) were Frank, me, Max, Maryam, Sandra, Andrew, Donna and Jean.

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