Urban Hiking

My last weekend of vacation so we tried to pack it all in.
Saturday night, a return trip to the fair for some fair food:

and a Pearl Jam cover band. We tried to win me a goldfish (we were going to call him Finn) but $1 later, we still hadn't sunk any balls and figured we could buy one at a pet store for another dollar, so we called it a night.

This morning we tried to get up early to get a hike in at the Mission Trails Regional Park. Given that temps inland can hit 90 by noon we wanted to get an early start. We did manage to get on the trail by 8:30 am. We climbed Cowles Mountain, the San Diego equivilant of Mt. Si. Hiking here is very different than in the northwest: no trees, no water, smaller mountains and very urban.

Adam and the chaparral:
Lovely Santee:
Some distant mountains:
Where the Pacific Ocean would be if the fog weren't there:
Then spent the remainder of the afternoon cleaning, potting plants and finally feeling settled. Tomorrow, it is back to work.

Hiking in the Heat

I had an entire weekend off and so Adam and I decided to do our first hike here in Southern California. Important lesson learned: when hiking in the desert, must start by 7 am or I will die of heat stroke. Needless to say, hiking between the hours of 1pm and 4pm, I was suffering in the heat. But it was a lovely hike nonetheless. We drove out to Julien, and small town about 90 minutes from San Diego. It's your typical quaint touristy town, famous for their apple pie. Then we drove about 20 minutes into the hills. I was surprised at how green it was for most of the drive. There was a huge fire in this area in 2003; 30,000 acres burned, 15 people died, 3000 homes were destroyed, many of them in Scripps Ranch which is a neighborhood just a few miles from where we live now. You wouldn't know there had been a fire here if you didn't know what it looked like before. Everything is growing back now and there is green everywhere.

We eventually got to the trailhead at a deep valley, very desert-like in appearance. Our destination was a waterfall along one of the upper tributaries of the San Diego River. You would never suspect there was water out here, until you notice the greenery at the bottom of the valley:

From there we made our way down to the creek where we suddenly found ourselves at the top of a 90 ft waterfall, with a swimming hole at the bottom. It looked very inviting, given it was in the 80's and I was hot. But we couldn't fiugre out how the get down, so we just enjoyed the view, then made our way back to the car.

We then drove back to San Diego, and decided to try to go to the Padres game, despite its being sold-out. That was an adventure in itself, which Adam will be telling you about. Here's a link to the rest of the hiking pictures, as well as a few from the game: