Sunday hike – Laguna coast wilderness park

Since my first blog post on the subject I have continued to go on the weekly hikes*, I had planned on writing about them all so anyone else in the area could benefit of the places we’re uncovering – a lot of them are probably very well known, especially with locals, but there might be some SoCal newbies out there like me.

However, as you know, I haven’t mentioned it since week one. The walks we’ve done haven’t been really worth writing about. This week was week 7 – we should be on 8 but we missed a week due to a late night partying and a certain husband being hungover, and until then we’d mainly been walking around flat nature reserves looking at the same half drained lake from different angles.

One week took us to Bolsa Chice Ecological reserve and yes, I’m sure the birds love it there and enjoy having a safe haven. But as a place to walk? Seriously! It’s right next the PCH, all the plants seem to be in the various stages of dying and I’m sure the birds would much rather be left alone to waddle through mud and catch fish.
Another week saw us on the Bayview Trial in Upper Newport Bay and their ecological reserve – side note: That’s another thing I’m not enjoying about hiking here, the place is so over run with cities, car dealer ships, fast food joints and malls that the nature has all been consolidated into one area. In this case that one area included tarmac-ed paths for our ease and comfort. WHO GOES HIKING ON TARMAC?!
The worse so far has to be the San Joaquin wildlife sanctuary. I don’t think the park was necessarily worse than the others, it didn’t lack something the others had had, in fact it had a little stream which was a nice edition. It’s more that by week five we were beyond fed up of sanctuary and reserve rambling.
Although when I have children, or am babysitting a niece/nephew, they are great places to go with a push chair.

This week however was different. This was more like the stuff I’d done back in England in the Dales and Peak district. We were at Laguna Coast Wilderness Park on a walk that promised 600ft elevation!
The place was lovely, I really enjoyed it. The walk begins with the most intense part of the incline which, had I known, I would have suggested we do the walk in reverse because it ends on a flat, along a dried out riverbed in the shade. I feel like having that to warm us up would have made the incline an easier and more enjoyable feat.
My British origin was evident on the climb up, I am not used to walking or even being outside in such sunshine. We’d got up early and headed out about 930am in an attempt to beat the worse of the days heat but the sun clearly knew our plan and caught us out. Half way up I made the californian lizard folk stop so I could stand in the shade for a minute or two. Of course this resulted in ridicule and I’ve challenged them all to come on a 1200ft hike in the cold wet winds. That’s my natural habitat, that’s where I thrive!

At the top of the hill you are meant to be able to see the ocean, but the smog prohibits that. Instead you see a hazey blur and pretend its the ocean. We had a choice now, turn left and add a 3 mile extension or loop behind our selves and head back to the car.
It had already been decided that we would stick to the short route so we pretended to enjoy the smog view for a moment while we re-hydrated and ate oranges before beginning the much gentler decline.

The place was quite busy, lots of cyclists whizzing down the hill. I’m always amazed that they aren’t sticking their legs out and screaming in delight as the shoot down the hillside. But I’m also always amazed that they don’t have handle bar streamers or a sweet floral whicker basket for snacks. I’m clearly not of a cycling mentality.
We also passed a few families and couple all slightly out of breath as they scrambled up the hillside.
And Asian folk. On every hike we’ve seen a different  group of asian youths always looking like they’re being forced by their parents (even though there are none around) and always carrying a speaker playing drum and bass as they dawdle around the reserve impeccably dressed in designer gear with beautifully coiffed hair. They really do look stunning but I cannot understand why anyone would prefer such awful music to the birdsong, or crashing waves, or running river, or even just the silence that the various walks have to offer as a soundtrack.

Next week we are attempting a 10 mile, 1300 ft elevated hike and, even more difficult, we want to be up and out by 8am to beat the sun. Maybe I’ll become a night time hiker and go on moonlit strolls, take a thermos of soup for if it’s chilly and never have to worry about skin cancer, the sticky feel of sun cream or the bugs it seems to attract.

*I use the term loosely, this is not hiking as any yorkshire man would know it. There’s no mud – hell you’re on tarmac a lot of the time, rarely an incline and not surpassing 4 miles.

50 hikes and a turtle hunt.

On a recent trip to Barnes and Nobel I found this little gem of a book. It was just after the weekend before NYE and Rus and I had done NOTHING all weekend, I was going stir crazy, we were both crabby and fed up and realising that we needed stuff to fill our time with.

I have always loved walking and hiking, as a child I would spend my weekends with my family and our dogs on the hills of Derbyshire, playing in rivers or waterfalls, scaring sheep and eating a picnic elevated high above sealevel.
As an adult I still enjoyed trips to the peaks but work prohibited it being a too frequent event. Luckily I was still just a ten minute walk from farmers’ lanes, woodlands, small hills and glorious scenery.
And even if I didn’t have time for that a trip to the local supermarket was a stroll under beautiful trees, past quaint brick houses (and maybe a petrol station or two), over a canal, along a river. Everywhere was nature.

Here in California it’s a different story. I’m living in a city, a concrete jungle, everything is spread out and nothing is a walk away. If I am going on a walk one evening, it’s around neighbourhood streets, past homeless men and along rows of telephone poles. There is nothing quaint, historic or beautiful about this place. Unless you happen to be out at sunset, that can be quite marvellous.

So I’ve been quite keen to try out hiking here, clearly a street walk won’t fill any void but maybe the secret lies within the hiking trails. This book is split into three sections, Coastal, Foothills and Mountain hikes each range from easy to moderate and they cover a wide variety of content, some are nature based in national parts, others lead you to historical places or encourage you to look for fossils, or, like the one we started with, send you on an animal hunt.

The first walk of the book is super easy, it’s in Seal Beach and along a bike trail next to the river. Looking ahead the scenery isn’t obviously beautiful, it’s a power plant.

But!

Because of the power plant draining it’s hot water into the river the temperature has risen and allowed for turtles to inhabit the place. There’s also wrens, hawks, ducks, fish and the possibility of seals in the river too so the entire time you are encouraged to keep and eye on the water and every ripple gets you excited.
Now I’ll be honest, it was no hike in the highlands of Scotland. It was a heavily used hike, in fact I won’t even call it a hike, it was a walk. Along tarmac. With quite a lot of rubbish on the banks. And a couple of homeless people in the way.

One thing I always loved about walking in the UK was that feeling of who may have walked before you, what their story was, were they running from an argument, meeting a lover for a secret rendezvous. And when was it first walked along. There was no replacement for that feeling of walking in another’s footsteps on this walk. Though I suppose this one was about turtles, not history, and in America you can’t have both because Native American’s didn’t walk on tarmac.