The Trail

Did I mention that we had hot weather yesterday? It got to around 90 with just about no wind moving. However we do have air conditioning. It is trying to get there again today but I don't think it will make it. Our neighbor went down to the beach yesterday. He said that the sand was so hot that you couldn't stand on it. He thought it was about 89 degrees and there was no surf, and no wind. That is not usual for the beach. They had to come back to cool down.

I did the hike this morning and I took my camera. Since the weather was clear I took some pictures. I guess the weather didn't need to be clear to see the trail, but it did need to be clear to see down towards the coast. The first one is without the zoom. Look closely in the V and you can see a distant hill.
With the zoom.These houses are actually part of San Juan Capistrano. Yes, where the swallows come back to.

As the crow flies, it is about 19 miles to the town of Dana Point. As the road turns, it is about 29 miles to W's place. The buildings that you see are much before you get to Dana Point.

This shows what some of the trail is like.As you can see there is a lot of growth on both sides of the trail. There are also lots of rocks, some put in to reroute the water when it rains. The next two show some of the up hill. It is steeper than it looks in the picture. From the trailer to where I turn around, it is about a 300 foot gain in height. Some times, however, you go down and then back up. Not only does the trail twist and turn, sometimes you have to twist and turn to go around/over rocks.
Horse back riders also use this trail. Sometimes it has to be hard for the horses. Note the evidence, above picture, to the left of the trail. Most of the time it is in the middle.

This is more up. You can see some of the rocks to divert the run off. This also is good for showing the color of most of the ground. It is sandy soil on top of sand stone, sometimes making it slick. I am standing at one bend in the trail and you can see the next, very close.
Sometimes it does level out some.
And sometimes it goes down. This is one of the places that you can see around some. Follow the draw left, from the tree to the right of center, and you will see some taller trees. The trail goes up into this draw. This is one of the nicer parts of the trail. The two pictures after this one were taken there.
I like this area because I am usually hot and tired. It is just a gradual up hill here. The ground is also much moister. I am amazed how damp the sides of the trail are in this area in the morning. I think from the dew. The air is also much cooler here and since there are some tall trees that form a canopy, there is not as much brush, so it is more open. Usually there are some birds here singing.
B just for perspective. It is maybe a tenth of a mile across this area.

Flowers and Roads

My mother didn't grow most flowers around the yard or next to the house. She grew her flowers in an area beside her garden, her "flower garden." One of the flowers that she always had that would reseed itself was California Poppies. They didn't last for long but they were pretty. I don't every remember her cutting any and bringing them inside.

As we got closer to the California coast I started seeing them growing along side the road. There are some growing in the trailer park, even one right close to the trailer.
Last week we were in Lake Elsinore to do some shopping so I took a few pictures so that you can see what the climb is like. The east side is where the plate lifted up, so it is a steeper drop. The west side was the slope of the hill and has eroded, forming many canyons and hills that the road now twists around. Some day I may get a picture of some of it. Here is the east side, with pictures from below and pictures from the top looking back.
In the distance, below the clouds, is another mountain range, not that far away. The peaks have snow on them. These are the peaks that we could see when we were hiking with W and C.

Of course there are lots of twists and turns in the road. If you are interested in seeing what it is like go to www.gmap-pedometer.com and type in Ortega Hwy, CA. The trailer park is located between the "N" and the double hair pin turn.

Hanging Out

Think of some of Dr. Seuss's stories and the trees that are in his book. C pointed out to us some of the local trees. I tried to get a picture of one. Do they look familiar? Their trunks are bare, no bark, and they only have leaves at the ends.

We went to one of W's soccer games. They lost 6-1 but were short three of their players. It was a no count game. They will play them again this week-end and it will count. So they are hoping all their players are there. W says they will beat them.

Here are a few pics from his game.
This is the way he spent most of the first half.

He liked this one, " Boy my face was flaccid."
The next two are actually in a series.

He plays defense but got a couple shot on goal. The one point that they had was not his.

Auck

As a kid growing up I learned to sew, not because I thought it would be fun, but because I thought that maybe I could get cloths to fit me. Prior to this my mother did the alterations. That was to the few things that were not hand-me-downs from my sister. Everything was about five years out of style, even though there are only three years between us. I was just always small.

I did come to love sewing, because things did fit. I still had to shorten just about everything I bought. Once in a blue moon it was the right length.

Yesterday B and I did some shopping as my summer cloths are about nonexistent or about worn out. I found a couple pants. Since I am so short, I needed to shorten the long pair. That is the pair that is suppose to be long. The other pair is suppose to be short. Since it is now in style to have a cuff in your Capri's I can just roll them up.

A cuff in the other pair is not the answer. Therefore the problem. Oh, for a sewing machine. Originally, there was a double row of sewing at the bottom. So I had to take out the stitching, saving the thread, (no thread to match in the trailer) and hem them by hand. Someday when I get to a sewing machine, I'll put those machine stitches back in.

Hiking

Tuesday W and C came up to the trailer. I think I may have mentioned that there are lots of hiking trails up here, on both sides of the highway. B and I have done some.

I packed a lunch and we took off on what was a 6.9 mile hike and took us just over four hours, including time out for lunch.

The trail does a lot of climbing for the first mile. That is as far as I had gone. Bob had gone the next mile plus and said that it was just up and down. He neglected to say that the up was on the way going and the down was on the way back.
The above picture was take soon after starting out. The building in the Lt. center is where we turn off to go into the trailer park. The far distant hill is the one that the road crosses to go to Lake Elsinore. You can see a bit of the road above the building. Just a little above this and looking in the opposite direction you can look into a gap and see how the weather is on the coast.

C didn't think I would catch this.
We say lots of flowers on the hike and lots of plants that we didn't know the name of.

This one looks like a wild peony.These had pretty blue blossoms.
C calls this one a giant asparagus. It is actually a cactus and this is the bloom stalk. We saw one just starting to blossom. I have seen lots on the hill sides as we have driven to W's place. Some are old from last year.
This part of the trail opened up. It looked like an old road. Most was just one person wide.
You can see what the hill sides look like. This was some of the down hill.

If you look just to the right of W's head and above the close ridge, you can see the top that the road goes over. So we are now as high as it. From here we could also see the snow caped mountain that is several miles east of Lake Elsinore.
Along the trails are also lots of small lizards. C kept trying to catch them but couldn't. Finally she got this one. It is broader and hornier that most of the others.

Sushi

While on our sail boat in rough weather in the San Juan Islands, I have often wondered if I could eat raw fish if I was adrift in a life boat. I never could decide on yes or no. Now I have an answer.

April 1, April fools day, is W's birthday. We wanted to celebrate it with him by taking him and C out to dinner. He got to pick. They decided that it was time for us to try sushi. They both really like it.


They did the ordering and did get some cooked items also, just in case. We started out with California Roll with crab, which is cooked but a good introduction, according to C. From there we had tuna (very tender and non fishy), then salmon (also tender and a little stronger.) Then it was on to several different kinds of fish.

I have to say, I could eat raw fish if I was in a life boat and I had caught one. In fact, if there was a sushi chef along I would even say it was good.

Going West

It is amazing how many different kinds of cacti there are. We have gotten to see a number of them, and I only know the names of about three varieties. As a kid growing up in Montana, I would see a few prickly pears and even some of the blooms on them in the spring. Of course, they were maybe a whopping three inches tall. The ones we have been seeing are over three feet tall. I sure wouldn't want to land in one.

When we were at Carlsbad Cavern they had several cacti planted on the grounds. This was one that was in bloom.
As we drove west to Yuma we saw several other types. Here is another that was in bloom and a close up of it's blossom. These are very tall.
Can you tell which way the wind usually blows?

And we did see lots of saguaros.

Sorry that they are leaning, that was just me.

This is not a cactus but I thought it was pretty.

The reason we went west to Yuma was so that I could see one of the woman that I worked with in surgery in Bozeman before B and I were married.
Bec and R kindly drove us around the area. The community is restoring a lot of the Colorado river front to it's natural state. One of the things that has been done is to put in a monument to the Mormon brigade. They traveled through this area.
This area is flat as a pancake as it is an old lake bottom. There are some areas called the bench and some rocky ridges that jut up high into the air. Some is below sea level. There is lots of agriculture and irrigation. Most people raise several different crops on the same piece of land, depending on the season. If one raises alfalfa they get ten cuttings.

From Yuma we drove on to California. Of course, it was just across the river from Yuma. However, we did go all the way to the coast.

After parking the trailer at Lake Elsinore, we traveled the Ortega highway to Dana point. It is a steep very twisty road. We were going to park in W's driveway, but he took his bike to work, so his car was in the way. We parked down the street and walked to get some take out. We took it to the Doheny beach and had lunch. I purposely walked out into the surf so that I could say that I had officially gone from coast to coast. OK! OK! I didn't put my feet in the Atlantic while in Boston. Remember how cold it was the day we were there?