My daily commute takes me up and over the Altamont Hills.

The colors of the hills change with the seasons, and at times they can be very beautiful.

During the rainy season the hills change to a beautiful green.

Rainy Season

I took this picture while driving over the hills one weekend when there was not much traffic. I was able to safely slow down and get a nice picture. I love the almost fluorescent green of the grass and also the line of windmills across the ridge. The cuts across the ridge are where railroad tracks cut through the hills.

Sometimes when the hills are in an intermediate stage of color, this is what I imagine as I drive to and from work.

Another time when I love the color of the hills is during the summertime. They sometimes turn a beautiful golden color.

Summertime

Since I really liked the first picture in the post, I decided that I needed one of the hills when they were golden. I again picked a time with little traffic so that I could get a picture for comparison.

These two pictures are probably the extremes when it comes to the color of the hills. Sadly, we also have another color that sometimes makes it appearance on the Altamont. Sometimes the hills are black when we have fires that are sparked by either a badly maintained vehicle or by someone throwing lighted material from their car. Fortunately, the hills eventually recover their beautiful color.

We also get accent color in the spring time with either wildflowers or mustard plants and they add a special touch to the hills. On my daily drive over the Altamont I can always imagine the colors when they are at their best.

Since the two pictures above are so close in position to each other, I decided to combine them together.

Gold or Green?

For this picture, I simply cropped the right hand side and pasted it over the left in a PowerPoint slide. I really like the result that I came up with. I am sure that there are some nifty ways to Photoshop the two pictures together, but even though I have Photoshop on my work laptop, I don’t know how to use it :-).

It is always a toss-up as to which side of this picture I like better.

Which side do you like?

Steven