A Little Hike

One morning, Dave decided that he wanted to go on a hike, so we decided to try out these two hikes. One was a hike along a path that is like a guided tour (they give you a paper and you stop at the numbers and then read about whatever it is that they want to call your attention to). The other hike was to a lake area that was supposed to have "fairy shrimp" and other interesting things. Unfortunately, on THAT hike, all I saw were gnats and a lake with dense brush. The second hike was quite disappointing, so I will focus more on the first hike. Frankly the second hike was SOO disappointing that I didn't even bother to take out my camera...I know right? Me? Not take my camera out... I take pictures of EVERYTHING!

So back to the first hike. We first stopped in the Santa Rose Ecological Preserve Visitor Center to pay the dues for hiking and obtain some information. There had been recent Mountain Lion sightings, so we wanted to get information as to where. In the visitor center there was an area that I will affectionately call the "poop display". This display contained poop from the animals that we may or may not see while out on the trails. Even if we do not actually see the animals, we could observe the...well...the poop and then determine what had passed through that area (no pun intended :P)

Display of Scat or Poop

After we took a moment to observe the poop, and of course I documented it photographically, we moved on to the trail that we were going to take. It was actually quite interesting as it was previously Indian lands and they had left as many of the artifacts as they could. Unfortunately, some hikers had stolen some of the artifacts, so they didn't have as many as they used to.


Caiden with his walking stick

Poison Oak - we steered clear of that


Lunch breakRegardless, it was a nice trail in which we learned quite a few things. We stopped mid way through to grab a bite to eat (Dave had packed us each a lunch...thank you Dave). All in all, it was a nice hike. Although, I think I would go back to the last hike we did by the water. I prefer to hike by water.