Old Boney Trail

It's been a long time since we have blogged about our hiking adventures. On Sat. we decided to make our way up the Big Sycamore Canyon Trail and turn right instead of our usual left at the fork in the road. While we were out hiking we started to talk to some of the bike park rangers. They told us about the Old Boney Trail, while they acted like the steep climb might have been too hard for us, we were up for the challenge. Perhaps we didn't look like seasoned hikers but we have climbed a hill or two! The climb started leisurely and then became pretty steep. After a good 1/2 mile of a large grade we made it to a more gradual climb again. Eventually finding ourselves at the top Marcus was interested in his iPhone service and we took the opportunity to call his mom. A nice rest at the top proved to be serene. The hike down through the valley held much more out of the ordinary than we imagined. We came across old farming tools, and a water pump. Inscribed into the cement was the date 9-1-51 perhaps the date of this old water pumps erection. It is of no use now other than to entertain hikers as a new path has be carved into the breeze grass by many who have traveled by . We continued past the grasslands area of the hike to the more wooded valley. We followed along a river bed, luckily for us it has not been a rainy year or we would have had to take our shoes off several times to pass through. After a few scratches from plants and near slips from damp rocks,we eventually connected back up with a trail we hiked last February. Familiar fossilized rocks marked us nearing the end of our hike. Our 10 mile hike became the most interesting when we made it back to the car, as Elizabeth pulled off her shoes to inspect my scrapes from a thorny tree. She discovered her pain came from a small tick. We grew quite alarmed as she did not want to contract Lyme disease. Nor did we want to pull the tick out, and it's head get stuck in my ankle. (perhaps a little bit of an overreaction, although it was our first tick experience) A short trip to the doctor and some antibiotics insured a safe removal and prevention from any infection.

Matilija Creek

Today we hoped to go geocaching... instead we climbed over and through 7 bodies of water. I say bodies of water because one might think it is a river while others might argue a stream or perhaps a bubbling brook. Anyway you slice it, it was cold rocky and took up almost our whole day. We are not to sure how long our hike was maybe 5 miles, but it took us hours. We would cross the stream only to find 400 meters later we had to cross it again. Last weekends rains kept the current strong and we both got wet. This hike was scenic with an abundance of trees and wild life. Our route lead us further and further from our cache, apparently we took the road less traveled (perhaps this is for a reason.) We really enjoyed the area, it was quite and beautiful. we tried to make to the cache at the end of the day but we were really just too tired and we decided to hike back to the car. A small bird coupe was along the side of the road which housed geese and peacocks. We stopped to watch these birds as they danced around with their tails in the air. This was our first trip to the Ojai area and enjoyed it's down town after our day of river jumping. Ojai lived up to its hippish reputation, we passed a RV that had painted on the side "Love lets us live" They called it their "Dream Ship" We will have to make it back here again sometime to get the Cache.

Super Geocaching Weekend!

The beginning

Marcus and I planned a super hike... Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into. We started out on the trail and we ran into troubles with our first few caches. We kept on and started to get luckier and better with our fickle GPS. We traveled down the spectacular Big Sycamore Can trail. The trail is busy on the weekends, many hasty mountain bikers were on the road so digging around in the bushes for small hidden treasures was difficult to be discreet about. (Perhaps they just thought I was peeing!) As we continued up the trail the amount of people dwindled.

The Serrano Trail

Marcus and I went off the main trail to find a Cache. The Serrano Canyon trail was stunning! The trail is narrow which criss crosses across a bubbling brook. There are trees that form a corridor that shade you from the sun. We found one cache and looked for a second. It was not too much of a misfortune because the rocks where this 2nd cache was hidden were fascinating conglomerate rocks. My class is studying these rocks as well as the shell fossil prints found on another rock nearby. I snapped many photos to share with my class this week! We hiked back to the main trail ready to call it quits for the day. We just wanted to find one more...(we must be addicted)

Addiction!

We headed up the trail and a windfall of caches came our way. We found some hanging from the trees and discovered our first travel bug (a special coded coin which traces it's travels.) It wasn't long until we were 1/2 way out and we could either hike back the way we came or try to find more caches. Being the over achievers that we are Marcus and I trudged along the trail from cache to cache. We began to get worried as the sun began hiding beyond the hills and the shadows became cooler. Our pace picked up and our searches became quick. Luck was on our side and we still found several. Our short cut turned out being a brutal up hill climb but led us straight to a cache. We continued on our way and we found our last trail... the Ray Miller Trail. We hoped it would lead us back to our car (with caches along the way of course). Perhaps google maps was not the best choice for our trail blazing but a map from the rangers shop would have saved us some time because we found the end of the trail and no caches, much to our chagrin. What was more disappointing was the trail would not take us back to the car. We began to back track to the last trail we were on. Marcus and I began to jog the rest of the way we were cold and racing the sunset (ala Will Smith in I am legend). The trail was serene as the sunlight began to fade. We made it to a small fire trail that switched backed down to the Sycamore trail. We made it back to PCH where our car was lonely in the once crowded parking lot. It was so nice to finally sit down after our titillating adventure! We were tuckered out and ready for dinner and bed. We found 13 caches and our GPS told us we hiked almost 17 miles; however google pedometer says 13 miles... Based on our hike today I am not sure who to trust.

Hooked on Geocaching

So all we could think about was our next find. I was even dreaming about weird locations and new logs to be signed. We set off right after a long staff meeting and brought our dogs along. Lola was a little difficult because she is still learning to walk. When we left it was dusk so we knew we would have to work fast. Cody's little legs kept up the pace and Lola found a warm spot in my jacket. Our first location we thought would be "easy peasy" but we looked and looked but to no avail had to give up for the evening. We decided to try Bubbling Springs #3. It didn't take long for us to find this one. Marcus had to use his man muscles to open up the box because it was almost rusted shut. We signed the log and took home a hair clip as a souvenir.( we thought this was pretty lame) We left behind some of our wedding matches for the next geocacher. We retraced our steps to last nights Cache and took the treasure (a small turtle )and left some more wedding matches. We plan on investing in something better but this is all we had lying around... If you ask me they're better than a hair clip. Well we are off to some Sushi to fill our bellies.

Kayaking and Geocaching

Today we took our kayak out for a celebratory jaunt around the channel islands harbor in honor of good ole' honest Abe's birthday. This was our first time kayaking in this harbor and it was a pleasant experience. It was very quite not nearly as many people out as there are in Huntington harbor and the houses aren't quite as extravagant either. Perhaps its so quite because its nearly impossible to find a non-private boat dock. After we found one we launched our 'yak in short order. It was a nice work out, but we both got some nasty blizasters on our thumbs. After our yaking adventure we decided to try our luck at geocaching, which has quickly become our new obsession. If you don't know what geocaching is check out www.geocaching.com, but basically you're like Nicholas Cage from National Treasure piecing together coordinates and clues to find some treasure (if you can call it that). We started off our geocache by finding the longitude and latitude of our house. After we got our bearings we drove off to where we thought was a close spot to the location of the cache. Well... we actually went way too far south and ended up walking all the way back up past our house. By the time we got near the cache it was getting pretty dark and we almost gave up, but our perseverance paid off. Right as we were about to leave Marcus saw a potential hiding place. Since it was so dark he was a bit hesitant to stick his hand into an unknown hole, but he did it anyway and we found the cache inside a painted altoids box. It was very exciting to find the hidding treasure and write our name down in the log book and see all the other people who have found the cache before us. We can't wait to go find another geocache tomorrow.

Mishe Mokwa Trail

Today we Hiked the Mishe Mokwa trail. It's about a 6 mile moderate difficulty hike. Many people were out hiking (perhaps because this is the first weekend without rain). However, not too many people followed this trail. (It is the longest maintained trail) The best part of the hike was the calm stream at the bottom of the trail that we had to hop across. A huge rock is down there that is split in two hence the name split rock. There is also a rock that appears to be balancing on a smaller rock (let's hope there are no earth shaking events that topple this rock from its precarious perch). The hike was beautiful but the Marine Layer kept us from seeing the best views at the top.