be sure to rollover ‘notes’ to see photo captions!
Meghan, Megan and I hiked the Mishe Mokwa trail to Sandstone Peak, the highest point of the Santa Monica Mountains at 3111 ft. It was a gorgeous day, and all of the plants were bursting with flowers. At the summit, we even saw hawks(?) soaring below us!
got up way too early for me and terry picked me up to go hiking at santa anita canyon. met up with christy and her friend karen. hike was fine until we missed a sign and ended up on the relentlessly steep and uphill hike up mt. wilson. got halfway to the top when we saw a sign that said we were definitely not on mt. zion, our intended destination. gratefully turned back. 3.5 hour/9 mile moderately arduous hike turned into 5+ hour/13 mile hike with gnats everywhere and we each seriously considered telling the others to go on without us/entertained thoughts of passing out and dying. made it out, everyone sweaty and dusty. terry and i had lunch/dinner at cheesecake factory and it was glorious. i will be extremely sore tomorrow.
Terry took me on one of her favorite hikes - the La Jolla Valley at Point Mugu State Park. It’s about 7-8 miles long and takes about 3 hours. At the end you get these sweeping views of the ocean. Beautiful! I also got a photo of a bee at work, and a funnelweb spider in her funnelweb.
I hiked from my apartment to the top of Mt. Hollywood, stopping at the Griffith Observatory and passing through the Berlin Forest on the way. The hike ended up being nine miles - about twice as long as I thought it would be.
One odd thing that happened: I had been sitting at the picnic benches at the top for about ten minutes when another girl walked up with her dog. Suddenly a swarm of insects flew right over and around us! They flew north to south, and it lasted for a full minute or more. We were both really freaked out - wondering if we got caught in some sort of Biblical plague or a horror movie or something!
Mysterious insect swarms aside, the view from the top of Mt. Hollywood is pretty spectactular - downtown, the Observatory from above, Glendale and the rest of the Valley…you can probably see out to the ocean on a clear day.