Nothing Special Hike

A and I planned to hike this morning at 8:30. I knew it wouldn't happen that way, so I didn't even bother to set the alarm. She called about 9, said she just woke up from a dream where she called me and I was already out hiking "because we were supposed to leave at 8:30." In fact, I was still in bed!

We got out there maybe around 10:15 and went up to the craggy top. It was the first time she had taken that route and she liked it. We continued north and rested for a while at the turtle-head rock. I wore my waist pack instead of the backpack, and it was at the rock that I realized I didn't have any water for Ed. We looked for a little dip in one of the boulders but found nothing suitable. I felt bad, but at least it was cool. While resting and chatting we decided to hook around at the spider and return via the tadpole. It has a couple of viscious uphill parts in the full open sun. But it was cloudy and breezy this morning so we decided to do it.

When we got to the spider we veered off to the left, and just before we hooked to the tadpole we realized the sun was out. Looking at the sky we predicted it would stay out, as most of the clouds had blown by. We weren't having that, so we turned around and returned on the lower yellow, the Ho Chi.

Other than a few harvestmen, we saw nothing remarkable. Only one butterfly at the end. For once I was satisfied that I had not taken my camera with me. As a bonus, we met 3 bikers while heading to the turtle-head rock, 2 young guys and a really old guy. It was the same old guy I say on the west side in the spring (or sometime.) He's got to be in his 70s, and A and I marveled at him.

Total hike was 3.64 miles, 1 hr 35 min. We had lots of stopping for bikers and joggers. We also met more hikers than usual. And since they are really just meandering around out of curiosity near the trailhead, I can't even call them hikers. More like strollers.

This afternoon we went to the shoe store and my friend's daughter fitted A with some cool trail shoes. She plans on wearing them around the house for the rest of the day to make sure they are right, then wear them on our hike tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm aiming for 5 miles.