Washburn Trail, Joseph D. Grant County Park, Santa Clara County, CA, 2/23/2007
Here is the view looking southeast past an elegant dormant oak tree from atop a hill near the start of Washburn Trail in Joseph D. Grant County Park in Santa Clara County, CA. I had just arrived at the park and thanks to the perfect weather, the vistas throughout Halls Valley were absolutely beautiful in every direction! This is by far my favorite kind of day, with bright sunshine and a deep blue sky graced with white puffy cumulus clouds out to the horizon. It wasn't hard at all to compose some great landscape photographs this afternoon! In winter the rolling hills at this end of Grant Park are brilliant green, and they - together with majestic oak trees and glimpses of distant snowcapped mountains - form a pastoral paradise. I was very happy to spend such a glorious afternoon here! Halls Valley lies between two ridges in the Diablo Range of the Coastal Mountains. The terrain including the gently rolling hills was formed by earth movement along the still active Calaveras Fault. This fault, which is of the lateral moving strike-slip variety is a major branch of the San Andreas Fault and runs 81 miles from south of Hollister, CA to the Danville-Walnut Creek, CA area.
