Another Hike, and a Trip to the Beach
Yesterday, John and I had plans to go out for a hike, but he called and cancelled on me because he'd been out too late with his girlfriend the night before, and they may have had other plans as well, but I forget. I was a little bummed, but decided to go out and do my own thing.
What I decided to do was to take my car up to Skyline Drive in the hills between the valley and the Pacific Ocean and find out of my 12-year-old car could even make it up there without overheating the blowing something. That's more climbing than it's done since I went over the Appalatians on my drive from New Orleans to Boston after college in 1991.
It turns out that I needn't have worried, since it performed admirably. I did have to drop down to first gear a few times on the hairpin turn/sharp uphill combinations, but otherwise I didn't have any problems. I got to the top of Page Mill Road and stopped after a short drive down Skyline at a hiking area. I actually didn't do any hiking there; I just did a short climb up a small hill to get a good look at the view. Unfortunately, Skyline is still considerably inland, so I could only get the barest glimpse of the ocean, but the country was still very pretty, and the clouds were dispersing, which made it even nicer.
I drove farther down (or, rather, up, since I was heading north) Skyline and eventually stopped at a hiking area in a forest, and decided after a little mental wrestling to do a longer hike. I quickly found myself heading down a very, very sharp downhill, and I worried at times whether I'd lose my footing and roll 30 or more feet down the hill, but fortunately I didn't. I crossed a very lovely stream, which I followed for several hundred feet. Soon enough, I realized that I'd lost about 300 feet of altitude, and had to decide whether to head back, or continue on this path which was still going down. I decided to keep going.
One impressive thing about the hike was all the bicyclists I passed - in fact, I don't think I passed a single pedestrian on the whole hike. These are obviously far more hard-core bikers than I am, and no doubt a few of them had climbed the 2000 feet of altitude to get to Skyline in the first place. Yeesh! A couple of them stopped to ask me whether they were on the right path to get back to the road; I told them they had about a mile and a half to go, but they seemed okay with that. Wow.
Although I initially got confused about which trail I was on, it all worked out. I stopped at a designated spot which held an old-growth redwood tree, which was expectedly huge. (It's so obvious, having now been out here, that MYST and Riven were crafted by people on this coast; the trees and colors are so obviously west coast rather than east coast or gulf colors, as are the plants.) I finally reached the perigee of my journey and headed back up.
Soon, I was confronted with two paths to take to return, of nearly-equal length. I chose the path which I expected would be steeper, on the theory that I'd be happy to get all the climbing out of the way as soon as possible. Well, maybe, but I gained about 600 feet of altitude in a fairly short time (the grades on the slopes seemed to be between 35 and 50 degrees much of the time), and was very, very winded, taking quite a few rest breaks. I did get some nice views over the trees as I climbed, and overall I was very proud of myself for making it back up, and getting back to the car. I estimate that I hiked about 6 miles.
Next, I headed the rest of the way down Skyline, and after a glimpse of the ocean to the west, decided to head down to Half Moon Bay, where I drove a little along route 1, and eventually stopped at a beach for about 15 minutes. I dipped my feet in the Pacific, which was quite cool; now I've really lived on both coasts. It was very chilly and windy, and the horizon appeared to be cloudy, so I decided not to stick around for the sunset. I headed home.
I put about 90 miles on my car in this one afternoon. Quite a bit of driving!
I think I'm going to like enjoying the nature around here.
Well, after my hike, I went over to meet John and his girlfriend for dinner - at her house, with her three kids.
I think I've mentioned before that I'm not a big 'kids person'. I don't really want kids of my own, and I often feel like I can't relate to other peoples' kids. It's rather strange. The fact that I rarely interact with kids probably has something to do with it. Anyway, this made for a rather chaotic evening, as one of them is very young, one of them is a teenager, and one of them is in-between (and therefore, perhaps by default, not quite as chaotic as the others). I find that age 8 is about the age at which I start finding kids palatable especially with a little steak sauce. So it was a pretty nice time, although I did feel like a fish out of water.
I was really zonked on the drive home, though, and felt like I only barely stayed awake for the whole trip. Yikes!
Other than that, it looks like I'll be moving into my new apartment on Thursday - or, rather, the movers will deliver my stuff from storage on Thursday, and I'll probably spend a couple of evenings shelving stuff and bring the cats and my day-to-day things over during the weekend. It'll be nice to finally have a home base with all the trappings of my life!
Next: car stuff.
Now I think I'll head home, feed the cats, and do some more reading.
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