Warm sunshine and a cranky camera

The weather-guessers delivered on their promise of warm sunshine for today, and I'm delivering on my promise of some wildflower photos from the trail.

Unfortunately, my camera had other ideas and threw a hissy fit, refusing to let me into the 'close up' mode, and refusing to focus on the flowers for the most part. Oh, for the days of non-digital cameras that I could actually control!

The trail as it goes up leaving my home -- its not all this steep -- some of it's steeper! But lovely.

 Not too many wildflowers in through here -- just a few fading Dutch iris. I noticed quickly enough that my body, while willing, didn't seem quite as willing as it did on the previous two hikes. I guess it's a good thing I was going slow, photographing flowers.

The trail from home goes up in 2 segments. This is the top of the first segment. From here, the trail goes through the woods to the left, emerging over the crest of this hill and joining the main trail in the trees to the right. One can walk up and down the rock road, of course, but having tried that, I prefer the trail through the woods.

The camera was really doing poorly along this section. I passed lots of these lovely wild orchids, but this was about as good as it would do in terms of focus. Sorry!

On the main trail I found tons of flowers, some even in the sunshine! Not all were willing to smile at the camera, but they're lovely, anyway. I took almost 100 photos -- most of which were out of focus. Alas. Is it time for a new camera?

Yeah, I went overboard on the trilliums. No apologies for that - they are gorgeous, have a short season, are one of my favorites, and there were hundreds of them along the upper reaches of the trail.

Back down to street level, walking from the trail head to the trail that leads up here. Pink dogwoods are not just in Georgia!

And of course, Oregon's pride, a rhododendron in full bloom. I really need to get to Hendricks Park while they are in full bloom up there.

The start of the trail back up here. It wanders away to the left for a short level stretch, then goes on up the hill rather steeply.

So that was my walk. My right knee is whining a little, but I think that's less the hiking and more the many times I squatted down to flower level to take a photo, then had to stand up again. It'll go away -- always does.