Mother's Day Weekend, El Moro Hikes!

Saturdays hike was really fun. Patti’s long time friend, Joni and her daughter Kristen joined Patti and I on a 14 mile hike through El Moro. I was hoping the girls would see all kinds of wildlife. While Kristen and I were waiting for her mom and Patti to come back to the Rangers’ Station we did see a hawk flying with a squirrel in his talons. The hawk landed in a near by tree and started to eat the squirrel. Kristen said she never saw that before. It was cool to see, nature at work. Once Patti and Joni made it back from the car we started off going up Moro Ridge. It was 9:00 AM, nice and sunny on Saturday. The first part of the hike, you’re hiking right through the Mustard Plants, and you have the awesome view of the ocean and Emerald Bay, baby bunnies are running around, you really don’t notice that you’re hiking almost straight up this huge hill for a mile! We’ve done it about 20 plus times and we still feel it.

Once we got to the top of the hill, Patti and I told our guest that was the hardest part of the hike and everything else from then on was easy. It actually was pretty easy, but they did start to comment on every little hill that we came upon. ;-) Joni is a workout queen at the gym and Kristen is only 16, so they both did the 14 mile hike without any problems. We really didn’t see any wildlife on Saturday, except the normal stuff, but Kristen and I did see the hawk, which was cool.

Sunday the 9^th, Mothers’ Day. It was just Patti and I. We started off the day early, and were on our way at 8:30 up, Moro Ridge again, but this time we wanted to take another trail once we were on the top. There are only a few left in the park we having hiked on.

So after we finished Moro Ridge we then headed left down Sommer Ridge. Just about 500 feet before we hit the trail head for the next leg of our hike we ran into another rattlesnake. This one was a nice one and blended in really well with the brush on the side of the trail. We almost walked right next to him. We stopped for a few pictures and then headed off to a trail we never hiked on before, it’s called Slow ‘N Easy. So far the most scenic trail we’ve been on. It’s on a ridge in between two other ridges we hike on a lot. We saw some flowers that we haven’t seen on the other trails, which was kinda neat. This trail started bending to the left and dropping into the canyon pretty quick, once we hit the floor of the canyon we merge onto another trail called, El Moro Canyon. This was really something; you’re surrounded by these old oak trees that had to be over 100 years old, and you’re under a canopy of trees. There was water running to the left us, next to the canyon wall, and also a few caves are visible. I was wondering where all the wildlife that lives in the park gets their water and I guess we now know. During this part of the hike we heard so many birds, we couldn’t tell what kind of birds there were, coz it was just too many of them. We did see a few that we didn’t recognize, and that was cool too, because you know you’re looking at something special.

On both Saturday and Sunday we did add about 100 pounds of large rocks to Lucy’s memorial. Saturday, Joni’s daughter, Kristen spelled out Lucy for us in white rocks, which was very nice of her. Patti and I both had a great weekend. Over the two days we hiked 25 + miles. Next Sunday we’re bringing another group of friends with us. If you want to come just let us know.