El Moro, April 24th/25th, 2010

Saturday started off nice and cool. We hit the Moro Ridge about 9:00. While we were hiking up the steepest part of our hike, we looked over towards the ocean and we saw dolphins playing in the surf. Out of all the hikes we’ve taken there, we never have seen dolphins before. About three miles into the hike we planned on setting up a memorial for Lucy.

Lucy was my baby, she actually was my friends’ Kristen’s little dog, but I considered myself her dad. I took care of her during the day and pretty much anytime Kristen needed me to. Lucy was such the love bug. She passed away April 21st, 2010. Okay, so we’re at the spot where we want the memorial. We planned on gathering rocks and setting up a rock memorial for lil’ Lucy. I didn’t think that there would be a problem finding large rocks at the site we picked, well, there was a problem and there were no large rocks. So we started off gathering any size rocks we could find, and that’s what we did. The next day, Sunday, we headed back to El Moro, but this time with a backpack. I carried, 50 pounds of rocks straight up the toughest part of the hike to Lucy’s memorial site. Patti picked some flowers along the way. We added the larger rocks to the small ones we sat down the day before, and her memorial started to take shape. We’re going to be adding larger rocks, and fresh flowers every weekend we’re up there.

After we left the memorial we still had about ten miles to go on our hike. Friday we did 6.2 miles, Saturday we hiked 10+ miles, and Sunday our legs started getting a little fatigued, but we kept on going. We ran across a gopher snake. I was able to pick him up, but he kept trying to bite me so I let him go on his way. No rattlesnakes sightings this past weekend, we did hear a few off the trail.

Towards the end of the hike the ocean breeze started blowing into our faces, cooling us down. We planned on heading back to our car and then hike down to the beach and eating the lunch that Patti packed that morning, but we were just too tried and drove to the bluffs in Corona del Mar over looking the ocean and we ate lunch on a blanket with our shoes off. ;-)

El Moro Canyon in northern Laguna Beach

My girlfriend, Patti and I have been hiking at El Moro Canyon in northern Laguna Beach since September of 2009. We started off just hiking a few miles at a time, which was fun. Our most recent hike was 5.5 hours, over 13 miles. Our favorite hike is the El Moro loop. We start off at the El Moro grade school, head down to Crystal Cove, hike on the beach for a few miles, head back up and start our real hike on Moro Ridge, which takes you over Emerald Bay. We think it’s the hardest part of the hike. It’s almost straight up the hill for two miles.

So far we’ve seen all kinds of wildlife up there, like, deer, rabbits, squirrels, lizards, road runners, quail, hawks, turkey vultures, falcons, sandpipers, lots of rattlesnakes, a scorpion, dolphins, and that’s about it so far. What’s cool about this place is that you never know what you’re going to see.

One Saturday this huge rattlesnake was hidden in the shade under a bush next to the trail, well we didn’t see him and he was just about a foot and a half away from Patti, and she and the rattlesnake both jumped in the air at the same time. It was crazy.