Gaviota Peak

June 19^th/20^th

About a month ago, Patti and I decided that we were going to pick one out of town hiking trip a month and that we would alternate picking the trips. Well the first trip was picked by Patti and she picked Gaviota Peak, about 20 minutes north of Santa Barbara. Our day was planned to hike to the top of the peak and finish off the day with hiking the Campbell trail. Unfortunately the California Parks system didn’t put up any signage for the trail heads. We kinda knew where to go from reading about the hike on the internet, so we thought we were going the right way. A few hours into our hike we finally ran into some hikers coming down the trail and got confirmation that we were headed in the right direction.

The hike started off nicely with the weather cool about 70° and warming up to a nice 77° in the afternoon with it never really getting too hot. It was a long ascend to the top which you really don’t notice until you looked down and noticed how high you were. Before you knew it we were overlooking the whole valley. Once we reached Gaviota Peak you could see 40 miles in every direction. There was a metal container at the top of the peak that contained journals, and everyone that reaches the peak has a chance to write a little note. In doing so, it’s like leaving your mark up on top of the peak which of course Patti did and left a note for the both of us.

So now we’ve completed one of our goals reaching the peak, but could not find the Campbell trail, again no signs at all up there! Patti saw another peak in the distance a few miles from where we stood atop Gaviota Peak so we started off for that peak. Along the way we kept on seeing these big lizards, which I identified on the net as California Whiptails. Some of these lizards were pretty large. Really didn’t see much wildlife up there except for bear scat (poo) we could tell what it was from all the berries in it. It would have been nice to have seen a bear or two out there.

Another part of our planned hike was to hit up the natural hot springs. I was a little worried after reading some blogs about this place. One of the posts mentioned that when they stopped by the springs there was a naked guy hanging out. I was hoping that we would find the springs without the naked guy. Well there wasn’t a naked guy in the springs….THERE WERE TWO OF THEM! After Patti and I made small talk with them and declining their offer to hop in and join them, we headed back to Carpinteria to rest and get ready for dinner. Patti has been to Carpinteria more then a few times and her favorite restaurant is Tonys, so that’s where we went for dinner. Great Italian food and wine! After dinner we took a walk down to the beach then headed back to the room to crash. We had no problem getting to sleep till we woke by a phone call around 3:00AM by a prostitute saying “hey baby, need a date?” I told her she had the wrong number and hung up while she was saying “no no no, hey baby…” too funny!

Sunday morning we woke up and got our Starbucks and headed down to the beach to get some miles in while we looked for seals and dolphins. We hiked up and down the beach for 4 miles and saw neither, oh well, it was still fun. We stopped by the Workers’ Bee Café for breakfast before leaving town. It was a huge and very tasty breakfast and we both cleaned our plates. One thing nice about hiking so much is that you can eat huge meals and not really worry about it.

On the way home after we passed Ventura we stopped by Camarillo Premium Outlets since there was a Nike Store and the soles of my Nike+ shoes are almost all the way worn down. I guess the lifespan on Nike+ shoes is about 900 miles. I needed a new pair pretty bad and picked up a really nice style for half of what they retail for. Now I just hope I don’t get any blisters breaking them in.

Our next trip will be in July, and it’s my pick. After watching the show “I Shouldn’t Be Alive” about the couple that got lost in the San Jacinto mountains I decided we should go there (just outside of Palm Springs and near another Nike outlet). Hopefully we’ll do better then the couple featured on that show.