Mission Trail Park (Carmel)
I took the girls on one of my favorite hikes last week. This is the Mission Trail Park hike, which is in Carmel, across from the Carmel Mission. You can hike up to the Flanders Mansion and check out the Lester Rowntree Native Plant Garden. She’s an interesting lady, that Lester Rowntree. She wrote a book, Hardy Californians, about her life with California wildflowers.
Typically, I have a great sense of direction, but I tend to get confused on trails. There are plenty of trail markers at this park, so we didn’t get lost, exactly. We took the trail to the right, which is the Doolittle trail.
There were a few wildflowers, but not as many as I was expecting. There hasn’t been much rain and it might be a bit early. Below are some Blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium bellum).
From the Doolittle trail, we continued up to the right (even though it looks like the girls are going left) along the Mesa trail.
At the top of the Mesa trail, there is a meadow and views of the Flanders Mansion. I came out here in the late spring/early summer a few years ago and there were Purple Owl’s Clovers, which are really interesting plants because they’re hemiparasitic. That is, they get some of their nutrients from the other plants around them. There weren’t any out on this day though.
When you walk around the back of the house to the front, you might notice the mansion’s only resident: a creepy plastic head.
We took a snack break on a bench in the garden. There were some plants, but not many that were flowering. Of course, the ceanothus is reliable at this time of year. I’ve been trying to learn about local mushrooms and had the girls keep an eye out for some. We only found a few of these red ones. I don’t know what they are though.
The girls had fun running the trails in the garden. They weaved around trees, up and down gentle hills. Charlotte actually ran back to the beginning so she could run it all over again.
We headed back down to the Mesa trail and then across the Sera trail to a bridge, which took us to Willow trail. There’s lots of Miner’s Lettuce (Eliza’s is holding some in the center pic below) and the largest Nasturtiums I’ve ever seen. They’re an indicator plant; large leaves and few flowers indicate rich soil.
