Cooler Coastal Hikes

The weather here has been very hot.  That continues to make our 52 hike challenge even more challenging.  Luckily, we live within about an hour drive from San Diego and that has helped us keep up.  We did our city hike in San Diego a few weeks ago.  We've hiked the past couple of weeks at Torrey Pines (also in San Diego County).  It's been warm and humid down there but so much nicer than the record temps of over 100 at home.  And, the views...WOW!  Gorgeous!

Click photo to see it larger....they're so much more fun to see that way.  You can even click through them from there to see them all larger.

The red ice plant on some of the hills is surprising sight.

I took my daughter there the first time and we hiked over six miles.  There are so many more trails there than I realized.  That's cool!

Hubby went with me the second time.  We hiked some of the same trails I hiked the first time but the tide was low this time and we were able to hike down to the famous flat rock in the water.

The beach next to that big flat rock is covered with interesting rocks.  This one looks like an ear...

It always amazes me at how dry and desert like the landscape is right next to the ocean.  It seems like all the humidity and moist ocean breezes would make it more lush and green.  There are even cactus!  But, there are lots of pretty flowers.  Here's an interesting one with beautiful color...

I love the color of these and they're so cute!

Teenie, tiny, wild snapdragons...

There are LOTS of yellow flowers...

And, white ones...

Heart shaped cactus and a cactus bloom!

What a beautiful day!

 Hubby and I had a wonderful day together!  We started the morning off with cappuccinos at our favorite coffee roaster in Encinitas, Ironsmith.  Delicious!  They are the best!  They're SO skilled at what they do and have the most delicious cappuccinos!  Then, our hike and walk along the beach.  We finished with lunch at a yummy Mexican restaurant.

Our daughter hiked one of the Southern California Peaks that day....16 miles in one day....up to a 10,649 feet!  Wow!

We've kept up pretty well with our challenge and have officially reached half way.  However, we are now one week behind because of another week of record high temps that even had the beaches sizzling.  It's supposed to cool down slightly this week.  We'll see what we can figure out to get caught up.

City Hike - San Diego

Our 52 hike challenge is tough to keep up with lately because of the extreme heat wave going on right now.  So, my daughter and I decided to bend the rules a little this week and hike in the city...a cool city...San Diego!

I love San Diego and I'm always so excited to go there.  It's only about an hour south of where we live.  There are so many things to see and do in the city and the surrounding areas.  It wasn't difficult filling our day!  And, the temps were much better!  It was about 105f at home but 69-75f throughout the day in San Diego.

We started with cappuccinos at Lofty Coffee in Little Italy.  Yum!  Afterward, we walked around a bit.  We found an awesome art supply store named, "Blick".  They had so much cool stuff!  I bought a couple of Tombow brush pens to play around with.  My daughter bought a really cool map/poster of California to frame.

Next, we headed over to Old Town San Diego for lunch.  We tried a new-to-us restaurant, Miguel's.  It was delicious and the service was very good.  After lunch, we walked around Old Town.  I've been there many times but I always seem to see things I things I've never noticed before.  It's a fun place to visit.

Heritage Park is nearby and we made sure to walk around the beautiful old Victorian homes.  I think this one is my favorite...

We did a little shopping after that and then we went to find the famous Spruce Street suspension bridge.  It's a walk bridge in a residential area that spans a deep ravine.  It was a little nerve racking to walk across because of the movement.  I didn't think it would bug me but it did...a little.  It was cool to see though.  It's amazing they'd go to this much work and expense to make a way to walk to the neighborhood across the ravine!

In a neighborhood on one side of the bridge, there was a tiny library.  So cool! 

One of the things we'd planned to do was to go to an African drumming class at World Beat in Balboa Park.  Unfortunately, it was cancelled.  But, that was ok because it just gave us more time to walk around Balboa Park.  Even though the museums were all closed, there was a lot going on.  There were concerts ending, being set up, a big one about to start, and various musicians performing throughout the park.  And, the weather was absolutely perfect!  It was a perfect evening!

I love Balboa Park so much!  It's a gorgeous and magical place!  Here's sample of the amazing architecture...

We sat down and listened to this concert for a while.  It was 50's 60's and 70's music.  This is the organ pavilion.  They regularly have pipe organ concerts here.

I took a stroll around the fountain before we headed to the car to go home.

I have no idea how many miles we walked on our city hike but my step counter said we did over 21,000 steps that day!   And, we had a wonderful time!  We're actually thinking of doing another city hike but this time we'll head to downtown Los Angeles.  Stay tuned!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Hiking Challenge

Thank you to everyone who left such sweet and caring comments on my last post.  It meant a lot!  I'm still missing our sweet Salsa a lot but it's getting a bit easier with time.

I've always tried to respond to all my comments via email but I've been having trouble lately with most of them coming back undeliverable.  I've thought about posting replies under the comments but, if you're like me and generally just visit a post once, you'd never see any replies posted there.  So, I hope ya'll see this just in case my emails don't go through.  Hugs!

For today, I thought I'd post a few pics of the most recent hikes in my 52 hike challenge.  I've been keeping up pretty well.  The heat has arrived though and that will make it more challenging.  I think I'm behind by a week right now and we're supposed to have weather around 105+ this week and next.  We're planning to head down to San Diego one day to do a hike near the ocean where it'll be a lot cooler.  An idea I have for another hike is to leave before sunrise and get to the mountains very early to hike before the heat arrives.  We'll see how it goes.

My daughter moved home and that provides us both with a hiking partner for our challenge (she's doing  the 52 hike challenge too...in fact, she was the inspiration for me to do it).  We took her adventure cat, Sonora, on a hike with us a couple of weeks ago.  My daughter has trained her to walk on a leash.  When Sonora gets tired she rides in the backpack.  She seems to enjoy taking in the scenery from there as we hike along.  She's a unique and amazing kitty!

We had some "May Gray" days and took advantage of the coolness on this hike.  We hiked in and out through the fog and watched it blow by.  It was beautiful!

This hike is uphill to the top of a hill with amazing views where we can often see the ocean.  Some sections are quite steep as you can see in these photos.  It makes for a great workout!

We do this hike fairly often and it's interesting that there are always flowers blooming but we never know what kinds we'll see next because they're always changing.  Here are some we saw on this hike...

We had weather cool enough one weekend to do the Eagle Rock trail again.  It was so much fun to take our daughter to this beautiful area.  And, that she got to hike a part of the Pacific Crest Trail! There was a creek, huge old oak trees, and expansive views. That's me in this photo.

A couple of weeks ago, we took our daughter to hike around a beautiful mountain lake that we discovered last year.  It was so pretty that we were excited to share it with her.

It was so full this year from all the rain that the trail on one side was closed.  It was awesome to get so much rain this winter.  We needed it SO badly!  I hope we'll be as lucky next winter!

I found some wild iris' on this mountain trip!

We hiked the Santa Rosa Plateau again last week and were surprised to see large patches of purple flowers where the vernal pools had been just a short time ago.  Beautiful!

We saw bushes with brightly colored berries along our hike.  Some glowed in the sun like jewels!

There was one spot on the trail with a few flowers I'd never seen before.  They're so interesting with their freckles and fuzzy edges!

What's the weather like where you are?  Are you having to work your plans and goals around heat or rain or even tornadoes?  There sure is a lot of crazy weather these days!

Wishing you all a wonderful week!

52 Hike Challenge

I love hiking!  So, when my daughter told me she was going to challenge herself to 52 hikes in 2017, one for each week of the year, I just had to join in the fun!  It's such great inspiration to get out there regularly and do something I love and get fit!

We started while she was home on winter break.  Our first hike was a nearby trail that is short and steep.  It's such great training that I decided to try to do this trail once a month.  It's called Monserate Mountain Preserve and it's in northern San Diego county.  The views are amazing!  You can see the ocean on a clear day.  There are beautiful hills all around.  There's a box at the top with notebooks for hikers to write their names, notes, etc.

My second hike was very short but I counted it anyway.  It was a small hill in Tucson that overlooks the city in almost every direction.

Hike three was with hubby.  The destination was a waterfall in San Diego county!  That's pretty amazing to see in Southern California after years of drought!  It was beautiful!

I was sick for the fourth week but managed to do a short hike in the hills above our little town.  Our dog, Salsa, came along too.  The surrounding mountains were covered in snow!  Beautiful!

Hike five was at Monserate again.  Hubby went with me this time and we made it a little longer by taking a different way back from the top.  That added another mile or so.  There were stairs in a section of the east/back side.

Hike six was to Eagle Rock.  It was longer than the previous hikes in my challenge.  And, it was oh so beautiful!  Here's the eagle shaped rock at the turn around spot.  The rocks are huge!

The landscape was just starting to turn green from all the rain we were getting.

Part of the trail meandered through beautiful, old oak trees.

Other parts of the trail went across open grassland.  It was beautiful!  Much of the trail was part of the famous Pacific Crest Trail.  That was exciting to hike on that!

Hike seven was in Tucson!  We started out just before sunset and finished with our headlamps in the dark.  Fun!  Here's a cool silhouette of hubby.

Hike eight was back to Monserate and the flowers were really starting to pop!

I got a pic of a bee enjoying one of the flowers...

Hike nine was to the beautiful Santa Rosa Plateau.  There are vernal pools there and they are very full this year!  Yay for the much needed rain!  There are walkways over the water.  It's fun to look into the water and see fairy shrimp, tadpoles, tiny frogs, and an occasional little snake.

We saw a chocolate lily that day!  We've heard they're rare but we do see them now and then.

On the way to the preserve, we stopped to see a local poppy field in full bloom!  Gorgeous!

Hike 10 was on Mount Palomar.  It's an area we've been curious about but had never hiked.  We were surprised to find a little pond up there, small streams, and even deer!

Hike 11 was back in Tucson with my daughter.  We decided to try Pima Canyon Trail.  We were stunned by the beauty!  There were SO many flowers and it was GORGEOUS!  Pictures don't come close!

Hike 12 was also in Tucson.  We hiked to Seven Falls by Sebino Canyon.  We hiked eight and a half miles that day.  And, I did it in my brand new boots!  It was awesome!  No pics of the falls though.  The falls area was filled with hundreds of people.  That doesn't make for great photos.  There was added interest that day as we saw a woman injured on the trail on our way up.  On the way down we saw that the rescuers had reached her and her family.  We saw search and rescuer people on their way up all along as we headed down.  Here are two that were going up on horses.  The injured woman was later airlifted in a Black Hawk helicopter!  It was a good reminder to be very careful.  And, that if you ever get hurt on the trail that help arrives slowly and might cost a LOT!  I hope she was ok!

I wish photos could come close to how stunning the landscape was with all the flowers.  It was amazing!

Hike 13 was an evening hike back up Monserate.  There were even more gorgeous flowers this time.  Here's one of them...

Hike 14 was in Anza Borrego to Maidenhair Falls.  It's a hike we've wanted to do for a long time.  It was hot that day but gorgeous and the hike was a ton of fun!  There was a lot of way finding and climbing around, over, and under giant boulders to some desert oasis' with palm trees and lots of greenery, and ending at a 20' waterfall.  Ahhh!...Refreshing!

Unfortunately, I twisted my ankle pretty badly on the way down.  I eventually made it to the car but had to rest it for a couple of weeks before I was able to try another hike.  Luckily, I was one hike ahead in my challenge.  That gave me time to let it heal without getting behind.

Last weekend, I went for my first hike after resting my ankle.  It felt SO good to hike again!  However, it started to hurt a bit after about 20 minutes.  So, even though I wanted to keep going, I forced myself to turn around.  I didn't want to go backward on my progress.  I'm glad I did that because it's feeling better and better.

I'm so excited about this challenge and fully intend to succeed.  It's such a great incentive to get out there more often.  And, hiking is a great way to exercise.  Nature is so good for the soul too!  I'm excited to see all the places this challenge will take us!