Thursday evening I met Ingrid and Ina out at Mission Trails. We intended on doing the Rim Trail but it ended up being a giant wonky loop and I have no clue what trail or trails we were actually on. That's the fun part about hiking with Ingrid. You can always count on an adventure and some off-roading. The weather was cool and cloudy but very humid. We took a little break to eat a snack and we got into analyzing how Ingrid eats her peanut butter sandwiches. She eats them in a circle instead of side-to-side, if you really want to know. And no jam, only peanut butter. She also butters them with the bread on top of each other instead of side to side. Yes, we really got into examining it. LOL.
Friday morning I met Georgia to hike Mt. McGinty. I was thinking I was going to hike at a pretty leisurely pace since I had just done 6 miles the night before. Georgia had different ideas and climbed that hill like a mountain goat! She worked me! We had intended to do 12 miles but we couldn't quite figure out which trail we were supposed to be on that would spit us out at the right place so we turned around to be safe. At the top of Mt. McGinty there is a memorial to Julian Fraire and we read through the register. It looked as though his dad set up the memorial and writes letters to his son when he climbs the mountain. They used to climb it together. I looked up Julian online and he was killed in a car accident this past March at 16 years old. Very poignant and sad: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Julian-Fraire-Steele-Canyon-High-School-Vigil-252724231.html
An old mine:
We climbed back down, kind of bush-whacking at some points because the trail wasn't clear. We kept talking about turkey burgers and couldn't wait to get down and get one. When we were done, we went to Brody's in Jamul and had turkey burgers and tator tots. YUM!
Saturday morning Dennis, Pico and I went out to Mt. Laguna to hike the 10 mile PCT/Noble Canyon loop. It was a beautiful day, sunny, and spring flowers were blooming. It heated up very quickly though and Pico only made it about 2 miles. I ended up carrying him for the remaining 8. It was good practice for backpacking with the added 12 pounds. The views out over the Anza Borrego desert were stunning as usual. Lots of greenery was growing back in the burn section so that's good. Truth be told, I could have been done at 5 miles. My legs were so fatigued. But I had 10 in my mind so that's what I pushed for. Dennis was amazing. I don't know who can have back surgery and then bust off 10 miles 5 months afterwards without any training. He really is an athlete. And he wore his ankle brace so no sprained ankles this time around. I was happy to see the truck at the end of this one.
Sunday I decided I was too tired to hike so I went out to Rocksanne's and saw her new colt Zorro. SO CUTE!
Monday morning Nancy and I met Laurie out at Cougar Pass at Daley Ranch. I had no idea such an extensive trail system existed here. I had only been to Dixon Lake and thought that was it for Daley Ranch. I will make sure to add this to my hiking circulation to explore these trails. It was setting up to be a hot day so we got hiking early. Maco, the service dog Laurie is training, came along with us. He's so sweet. Laurie and Nancy have Flat Stanley's that were made by an Alzheimers patient group on Facebook so we had fun setting up different scenarios for Flat Stanley to share with them. Laurie lost her sunglasses and we backtracked to find them and Flat Stanley spotted them in the trail.
They are also into geocaching so we made several stops to find caches and sign registers. A cache has stuff in it called "swag." You can take an item but you have to leave something in return. Some of the stuff is just crap but once in awhile there's something pretty neat in there.
At one point, Nancy was looking at geocaching way points on her phone and trying to talk to me at the same time and she fell down. She gave us quite a scare. Scraped up her knee and hand and her shoulder was already forming a bruise by the time we were done. She is fine but her iphone screen was shredded because it went flying and landed face first. We made it back to the cars with great relief.
I went home and ate chips and salsa, home-made potato salad, bbq Hebrew National hotdogs, and drank an ice cold corona.
In less than two weeks Nancy, Carolen, Don, Di, and I will be backpacking from Red's Meadow to Tuolumne.
YEEHAW! Livin' the dream, baby!
PS: one more picture just because he's so stinkin' cute.
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