Lime Ridge 7-28-14

Mt. Diablo from ridge high point

It was a Monday morning, and I had an appointment in Walnut Creek. Since I was already out there, I decided to take a little hike at Lime Ridge, an area that I have driven by often but never explored. It is an open space park run by the city of Walnut Creek along Ygnacio Valley Road. As I started off at about 11:30, it was a bit warm but there was a nice breeze from the west. As I gently climbed up grassy hills, I noticed that the whole hillside appeared to be much too bumpy to be natural. A lot of the hill had been dug away leaving a few steep slopes with white rocks exposed. I checked later and found that this had been a quarry for limestone that was used to make cement during the first half of the last century. Grass and trees are reclaiming the landscape, but the bumps remain. I followed the Ridge Trail, a single-track heading for the high point. No one else was around, but I could see that these trails were popular with cyclists because there were more tire tracks than footprints. There were wide open views to the north and west.

I came to a trail junction next to a rusty water tank, and chose to continue up the ridge to see what it was like at the top. I kept climbing, now in chaparral dominated by Chamise, and soon came to the high point of the ridge. There was an area closed off with a cyclone fence for some unknown reason, but there were good views from the top. I turned right onto the Lime Ridge Trail, another single-track. It wound down the hill to the west in chaparral and oak woodland with lots of buckeyes. It looked like autumn because the buckeye leaves turn brown in mid-summer rather than fall. When it appeared that I was nearing the bottom of the hill, I left the trail and cut across to the right to the Blue Oak Trail, which I followed back up the hill to the rusty water tank. I went down the other side of the hill on the Paradise Valley Trail which drops into a little valley which is not quite paradise, especially in this dry season, but it is nice enough.

So now I at least have some idea what Lime Ridge is like, and it is pretty nice. Lots of trails and lots of variety in the terrain and vegetation. The route that I took was mostly the result of random wandering around, so it should be easy to figure out a better one. I only explored a relatively small part of the park, so I may go back again some time.

3.25 miles, 750 ft. climb

Briones 7-19-14

Diablo View Trail

It was a Saturday and Maureen was going to spend a few hours at her riding teacher's ranch practicing Western Dressage. It seemed like a good day for a hike, and if I chose someplace in that area, we could share a ride. Then she decided to ride with her friend, Marsha, but we could still come home together. My recent hikes had all been rather short ones, so I wanted to do a longer one today, just to prove to myself that I could still do it. So I decided to do a loop into the northeast part of Briones Regional Park. Briones is a fairly large park with lots of trails, so there are many different possibilities for a loop hike.

I drove north through Walnut Creek and parked in the Alhambra Creek Staging Area. I started hiking up the Diablo View Trail. The morning fog was gone and it was a beautiful day. I was soon climbing along a ridge with several ups and downs, much of it shaded by oaks. I turned right on the Spengler Trail, descending to cross a small creek and then climbing again. This part of the trail felt quite remote although it is not really far from roads and homes. Over a hill and down the other side, I came to the junction with the Blue Oak Shortcut. Up to this point I had been feeling pretty strong, but now the hike turned more serious. The trail climbs to the top of the main ridge in unrelenting steepness, gaining 700 ft. elevation in a little more than half a mile. Once I was at the top, I knew it would be mostly downhill, but I was quite tired. In planning the hike, I had thought about extending my loop further west, but now all I wanted was to get back to the car. I was also starting to be a bit concerned about the time. I didn't want Maureen to be waiting for me to drive her home. Now that I was gradually descending along grassy hilltops, I felt a bit revived, and was able to keep up a pretty good pace down into the valley of Alhambra Creek and back to the trailhead.

Even with that stretch of steep climbing, it was a very enjoyable hike. There were plenty of other people out on the trails, but for much of the way I was alone. I noticed quite a few mountain bikers, and I was glad that I wasn't one of them trying to pedal up some of those steep grades. In several places I saw unofficial single-track trails through the woods, with cyclists speeding along them. I don't imagine that the park rangers appreciate that too much. When I got to the ranch, Maureen was still riding but almost done, so my timing worked out pretty well.

6.0 miles, 1550 ft. climb

Leona Canyon 7-13-14

Leona Trail

Sunday afternoon seemed like a good time to go out for a little hike. I thought that it would be nice to try someplace new, at least new to me, but I didn't want to drive far, so I came up with Leona Canyon. Leona Canyon Regional Open Space Preserve is a relatively small park tucked into the hills of East Oakland between 580 and Skyline Blvd., just south of the Merritt College campus. I left Darby at home to avoid any problems with off-leash dogs. I usually don't take him out on trails on weekends, and I had heard that this park was popular with dog walkers.

The map showed a trailhead just off Keller Ave., so I drove up that street looking for it. I went all the way from 580 up to Skyline without seeing any sign of a trailhead. After a closer inspection of the map, I saw that it is just off Campus Drive on Canyon Oaks Drive. It looks like it is just a parking lot for a group of condominiums, but beyond that is parking for the trail. I started up the Leona Trail, gently climbing on a shady trail beside a small creek. There was still a trickle of water, which was nice since so many east bay creeks are bone dry in this drought year. I had looked at the map for possibilities for making a loop, but the only ones I came up with involved a lot of walking on city streets, so I just continued on up the canyon past two trails branching left and right. At the top, I found myself in one of the back parking lots of Merritt College, and I turned around and headed back down. I had seen on the map that the two side trails looked pretty steep, but I wanted to check one of them out anyway. I started off up the Artemesia Trail, and as I expected it was quite steep and getting steeper. I soon decided that it wasn't worth the work just to satisfy my curiosity, and turned around. So Leona Canyon was a nice little hike, but nothing too special. A good place for a walk for people who live nearby, but probably not a place that I'll keep coming back to.

Back at the car, I wanted to drive up to Skyline and take another look at the Oakland City Stables that I had hiked through several months ago. I found the entrance road with a gate across it and a "no parking" sign, so I gave up on that idea. I was hoping to take some pictures of the old spanish-style building that I had seen before. Just this morning, I read in the paper that the city had made a deal with a group that was going to fix up and re-open the facility. That sounds like good news and maybe I'll go by and take another look at it some day.

3.1 miles, 500 ft. climb

Utah & Colorado trip 7-9-14

My dad passed away last January, and my brother Richard and I wanted to take his ashes to his home town of Logan, Utah, and have them buried next to our mom. We had a memorial service for him in March, and my cousin John came to it from Colorado. He invited us to come see him sometime, and it sounded like a good idea. We thought we could work out a trip to visit Logan, John's place, and some country in between. Maureen wasn't too thrilled by the prospect of driving across Nevada, so we came up with the idea of flying to Salt Lake, renting a car, driving to Colorado and flying home from Denver. It's not that we don't like Nevada — we have visited a lot of beautiful places there — but I-80 can be long and tiring.

So we took off from Oakland on Monday, June 30, for a 10-day trip. We don't really like to fly very much, but one thing that I like about it is being able to look out the window and see all of the interesting patterns of the land. Unfortunately, we didn't get a window seat and as soon as we were in the air, the young woman by the window shut the shade and went to sleep. In Salt Lake, everything went smoothly, and we were on the road to Logan in a little Toyota Yaris. We had asked for a compact, but I wasn't expecting a car that small. But it worked out fine since we didn't have a lot of stuff with us.

It was really great to come over the hill and see Cache Valley and Logan up against the mountains. It always brings back fond memories of vacation trips when I was a kid and we visited with family in my parents' home town. After getting a motel room in Logan, I called my cousin Leo and we found our way to his home. He and his wife, Susan, took us out to dinner at the Bluebird, a restaurant that my parents always talked about as the fanciest place in town. Leo and I were able to catch up a bit on the last 30 years or so since we had seen each other, and reminisce about some of the crazy things we did together as kids.

My maternal grandparents' home in Logan

Tuesday morning, Maureen and I walked around the old neighborhood where my mother's family lived. It hadn't changed much from my childhood memories. My grandfather had built his own home there along with many of the other houses on the street. The houses of two of my aunts and uncles were only a few houses away from my grandparents' home. We also walked around the neighborhood where my dad grew up, near the Logan Temple. Logan is really a nice looking town, with old tree-shaded streets and views of farmland and mountains all around. We were struck by how green everything was. It seems that northern Utah has not suffered from drought this year like California has.

Richard and three of our cousins, Charlotte, Leo and Joy, at the Logan Cemetery

In the afternoon, we went to the cemetery, and had a little informal memorial for dad. Leo had contacted some of my other cousins and relatives and I was very pleased that they all came. I hadn't seen them in many years and it was nice to be together again. We all shared memories of dad and I was surprised that they remembered so much about him, since they were from my mom's side of the family and only saw dad when we visited from California. Later, we spent the evening at Leo's home and got to talk some more.

Logan Canyon

View from the trail at the summit of Logan Canyon

On Wednesday, we packed up and drove up beautiful Logan Canyon and stopped at the summit where there is a wonderful little loop trail through the forest. There were firs and aspens and lots of wildflowers, and sage meadows with mountain views. I always loved seeing Bear Lake, but it was a little disappointing that day because the air was very hazy. A little later, we passed through Randolph, Utah, which I was interested in seeing because my dad's father spent his first year in the U.S. there after emigrating from England in 1901. Randolph is still a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, and it must have been quite a shock for my grandfather to come alone from an industrial area near Birmingham to such as remote place. After passing through Evanston, Wyoming, we could see the snow covered peaks of the Uintas ahead, and we were soon up among them. I had good memories of a trip my family made with my maternal grandparents to Mirror Lake, and I wanted to see it again. Maureen and I took a little walk along the lakeshore and it was every bit as beautiful as I remembered it. We came down out of the mountains into Heber Valley, and stayed in a funky old motel in Heber City.

Mirror Lake

Thursday morning, we drove for a few hours east to Dinosaur National Monument. From the visitor center, a shuttle took us a short distance to the dinosaur quarry, where a building against a cliff face protects the site where many fossilized dinosaur bones were discovered. It is pretty amazing to see the bones of many dinosaurs packed together and sticking out from the rock. We drove a short ways to the Split Mountain campground and walked along the Green River. It was very scenic, but the day was rather hot, and we didn't go far. We drove to the end of a road that crosses the river and goes to the ranch of a woman who lived there alone and raised cattle until she was nearly 90. There was a log cabin in a pretty green spot in the cottonwoods, and we hiked the Hog Canyon Trail through meadows and into a box canyon heading into the sandstone face of Split Mountain. I didn't mind the heat so much because it was such a beautiful place. We spent the night in Vernal, Utah, and found a pretty good Mexican restaurant for dinner.

Green River at Split Mountain Campground, Dinosaur National Monument

Hog Canyon Trail

On Friday, we drove east into Colorado, and up a side road back into Dinosaur. This time we were on a plateau high above the rivers, and at the end of the road, we hiked the 1 mile trail to Harper's Corner. It follows a narrow ridge through Pinyon Pine and Junipers to its end where you can look down thousands of feet to the place where the Green and Yampa Rivers flow together, a really spectacular view.

Steamboat Rock from Harper's Corner Trail

Next, we drove on to Maybelle, a tiny farm community, and made a side trip in hopes of seeing some wild mustangs. A few miles northwest is Sand Wash, a large area of BLM land where wild horses have been relocated. There are a couple of loops of dirt road where they say that with luck you may see horses. As we started out off the pavement, a large, dark cloud loomed in the west. Several miles in, the road wound up to the top of a hill, and raindrops began to fall. Suddenly, it was a downpour with some hail coming down too. We stopped, thinking that it might soon blow over, but then I realized that the ground was really getting wet. I decided that we had to try to get out of there, and started driving down the hill. The road was getting very slippery, and several times, we almost slid off it. I was really getting worried that we would get stuck out there in a very remote place with no cell phone service. But we made it back to the highway as the storm moved on by, and with no harm done except for the mud-covered car. We got a motel in Craig, and spent the fourth of July evening hearing fireworks but seeing nothing because we were on the wrong side of the building.

Near Sand Wash

In the storm, Sand Wash

On Saturday, we drove on east through lots of nice country — sagebrush flats, green farmland, and pretty mountains — and up over Berthoud Pass to the rushing traffic of I-70. Then up through Central City to the mountains west of Boulder where we found our way to my cousin John's home. He and his wife, Pat, have a big log house on a good-sized piece of land with green meadows and pine forest, a couple of horses and four dogs. It was really a wonderful place to stay. They fed us great meals, took us on great walks, Maureen got to ride with Pat a couple of times, and I hope we didn't stay too long, but we had the best time there.

John and Pat's place

Walking the dogs with John and Pat

Pat and Maureen with Ben and Ruby

Besides several walks around the area with their dogs, on Monday we drove a few miles for a hike at a place called Brainard Lake. Parking at the two trailheads was full, so we had to park a mile or so down the road, but it was well worth a little extra walking. We did the trail around Long Lake, about a four mile loop. At over 10,000 ft. elevation, below 13,000 ft. peaks, it was a gorgeous place. We soon discovered that the going wasn't so easy because there were many patches of snow and muddy trail to go through. But it was still a very enjoyable hike. Back at John's house, I helped him unload and stack a load of hay. John kept at it until it was done, but I had to stop and rest every few bales. I guess I'm not in shape for that kind of work.

On our hike around Long Lake

On Tuesday, John and I walked the dogs again while Maureen and Pat rode the horses, and then in the afternoon, we packed up and left. We drove through Boulder and into Denver, where we wanted to see the Denver Art Museum. We found a parking garage and walked a few blocks to the museum, passing the capitol building. We saw a lot of interesting stuff there, but museums are tiring after a couple of hours. Now it was rush hour and we had to get out of downtown. After wandering around a while trying to avoid the gridlock, we made it to the freeway and to a hotel near the airport. We were a bit concerned about how to manage the logistics of returning our car and finding a restaurant because the airport is way out of town and everything is too far apart to walk. But we found that there are shuttles that make it possible.

We got up early Wednesday morning for an 8:30 am flight, and soon we were on our way home. This time I got a window seat, and got some great views of the Rockies. Clouds covered much of Utah and Nevada, but they cleared over the Sierra and let us see Yosemite, and it was fun to see some familiar places from the air.