Saturday, February 27, 2016

Misc hikes this week


Still keeping busy dealing with probate.  Almost have my mother's condo sold, but don't know how on earth I'm going to get all of the stuff out of it.  Been cutting back a bit on my miles and hiking in town to save time.

Here are pictures from a couple of hikes.






I can't believe that people kill these.  They are so soft and they
don't hurt a thing.  This is a mole.

Coyote track

Abandoned tracks

Toxic hike, don't drink the water or touch anything

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Lake Slimy Egg

Back to the same old close to home hike that I don't like to talk about too much.  Back to good old Lake Slimy Egg.  I was not feeling well, so I took a short cut that saved a mile and I had two cups of coffee at lunch time.

7 miles with 200 feet elevation gain

Baeomyces rufus












Monday, February 15, 2016

Geocaching in Arcadia




Got off to a late start and was not sure if I could go after all the caches on my list.  Was in a foul mood too.  Deer guts, possum carcass and piles of garbage at my parking spot.  Yuck.  Kept Patches on a leash until we were clear of all the yucky stuff.

Could not find the first cache on my list.  Dropped my map and had to go back for it.  Maybe this was a bad day to be in the woods.  Things got better but I was so tired and grumpy.

Lunch and coffee on the shore of Lake Forbes cheered me up.  A home owner came out and looked around.  So I figured it was not a real hike and I whipped out my brand new first ever smart phone and tried to figure out how to send a text message.

After lunch I had to cross a creek in some dark woods to go look for more caches.  Maybe there was not enough light left for this?  The light faded, my planned brush crashing route was too brushy so I had to back track instead of making loop.

Back in the dark canyon at the creek crossing and I was clearly not in the right spot.  This was not where I crossed the creek.  The light was fading my GPS(r) battery was going dead, I cussed a bunch.  Then I got out my nifty battery / hand warmer / flashlight and plugged in my GPS and turned on the light and found my way out of the woods.  It was almost dark so I phoned home.

Back near the car I put Patches back on a leash.  The smell of the gut piles almost made me vomit.

9.5 miles with about 200 feet elevation gain.

Newts were marching across the road and frogs were croaking.










Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Geocaching in Kamilche





We decided to change things up a bit and go on a geocaching run on my hike day.  We still managed to hike 7 miles and gain some 1,000 feet of elevation while finding 24 geocaches.  We are both more tired than we are after a 10 mile hike.  Must have been all the off trailing we did.

Here is a sample of some of the caches we found:





















Monday, February 8, 2016

Wallace and Jay Lakes


Back to Jay lake.  I've been there once before.  I just needed a good long hike to clear my head and did not need the adventure of going someplace completely new.

I took the Greg Ball trail up and combined the Greg Ball trail and the railroad grade for the trip down.

11.5 miles 1,600 feet elevation