Just down the hill a few miles, there were patches of these beautiful little plants in this marshy meadow,
saturated with recently-molten snow. A few coyotes slunk by, but my garlicky scent apparently drove them away.

Highway 245 through Pinehurst turned out to be a hidden gem of a road.
Pity it was raining. I'll have to come back here again this year.

Further down the hill, near Visalia the roads eventually straightened out, but they still seemed pretty interesting.

Behind the hotel in Three Rivers is a wide, slow-moving river and I'd had just enough Irish coffee after my chilly ride
to make mountain-goating over these boulders fun. This family was chasing behind me on the rocks...

...and two of the girls fell in.

I must have sat on the comfortable boulder beside this river for more than 3 hours; writing in my travel log, soaking my feet in the ice-cold water, drinking ale, watching the little swallows dart around just above the surface of the water, feasting on the tiny little flies. They were so fast that no trace of them ever showed up on my pictures.
I must have been seriously spacing, because it got dark very suddenly.
I fell in love with this spot on the Kaweah River and it took two trips to clean up all the trash there.

Pictures do a poor job of capturing the brilliant gold heather hills
and the contrasted dark-olive color of the oak tree clusters.