Thu, Jun 1 - Hiking in Somiedo Natural Park

A nice sunny day.  Clouds increased in the afternoon, but did not become thick like yesterday.  We set off after breakfast to explore this large park (~100,000 acres).  This area has been occupied by farmers for thousands of years so it is not like a national park in the US, but full of villages and pastures.  The Park Service works to protect the rare animals and plants and has a good system of well-marked hiking trails and brings a lot of tourism to the area. 

Columbine

The park has three main roads branching off the AS-227 that we arrived on yesterday. We continued on that road north towards the coast, turning off on a tiny road that wound back up into the mountains on the west side of the park.

Villar de Vildas

Elevated Granary with dog

Ancient Tile Roof

The road ended in the village Villar de Vildas, where we avoided getting stuck in a tiny alley by parking outside of town.  We walked through the village, past buildings with crumbling old tile roofs, and wooden grain storage huts elevated to avoid problems with mice - and all patrolled by cats!  











After hiking a mile up through meadows with flowers and cows, we returned to drive to the east side of the park on a road that went up to 5600', the highest we have been this trip.  

Spring Gentian

Orchid sp.

We started seeing wonderful sub-alpine flowers: amazing blue gentians, tiny white orchids, masses of lavender heath and yellow broom among many others.  We were hoping to see Oso Pardo, the local brown bear, but no such luck.  Bob did get a good view of an Alpine Accentor, a new life bird.  We hiked through beautiful scenery to an overlook of a rare alpine lake and, hungry, decided to go back and look for lunch.

Mosaic of Yellow Gorse and Purple Heather

Lago del Cuerva

We stopped in Saliencia, the nearest town, and found a bar/restaurant in the Albergue de Saliencia and split the  menú de día, which today was a platter of pasta tuna salad, followed by breaded thin beef steaks with cheese sauce and fries, and a flan.  We just drank bottles of beer as we had a ways to drive to get back to the Palacio.

Alberque de Saliencia

We returned about 5 and walked the grounds and relaxed.