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.

The Facebook advertised, “Frank & Patti's El Moro Hike”

May 2nd, 2010 - This past Sunday our friends and family, Grif, Katie, Laura, Anjanette, Brittany, Alex, Laura, Dana, Chris, Patti and myself all went on our Facebook advertised hike in El Moro. Patti and I were both excited to see so many people come out. We weren’t expecting a lot of people to participate, and come out to the canyon for a day of torture. Actually, only the first part of the hike is a bit difficult. Once we hit the base of the hill that overlooks Emerald Bay, you walk about a mile straight up that hill. We took a few breaks along the way, but everyone made it up the hill just fine.

Along the way some of the girls collected little white rocks to spell out “Lucy” for her memorial. I loaded up my pack with a few larger rocks to add to Lucy’s memorial as well and it’s really taking shape now. This was our 4th visit to the site and with a little help, we want to eventually make a memorial wall with a hole in the center for flowers. Lucy was a large part of my life along with Lucy’s mom Kristen, and all of our friends, and I will miss her forever.

So after adding to Lucy’s site most of our group had other commitments, so we showed them the trail back down to the ranger’s station. They headed down the “I Think I Can” trail…. haven’t heard from them yet, but I’m pretty sure everyone made it okay. That group did get a nice 7 mile hike in.

Now, Patti, AJ and I continued on with our normal hike across Moro Ridge to Sommer Ridge and then took a left on No Name Ridge for the home stretch. Our total hike was 3.3 hours long and 13 miles. It was a really nice day close to 80 degrees and sunny, but the wind did start to pick up. Our original plans were to hike down to Crystal Cove for a picnic but thought it might be too windy so we all three drove to the bluffs in Corona del Mar overlooking the ocean. After we ate the great lunch Patti had prepared the night before, we were all three so tired that we could have taken naps right there on beach towels. On a funny side note, AJ really enjoyed the cookies Patti baked and ate almost a whole bag of them by herself. When Patti and I drove away, AJ drove herself to the back bay and hiked another 8 miles to work off those cookies. She blamed that on me, since I might have been kidding her a little bit, oh well. All in all we had a great time with everyone coming out. Hopefully we all will do this again real soon.

May 1st 2010, El Moro Canyon

El Moro Canyon

Today started off being a perfect day. The weather was nice, the ocean blue, Patti and I both had our Nike Plus systems to count our miles. It was just great! After last weekend, I knew we could collect the big rocks for Lucy memorial closer to the top of the hill, unlike last weekend when I carried 50 pounds of rocks straight up the Moro Ridge for over a mile. Well we collected another 50 pounds of rocks but didn’t have to haul them up hill, but still had to carry them on across the top of the ridge for almost a mile. Lucy’s memorial is going to be the best. I bet once we’re happy with it, it’ll be built with 500 pounds of rocks. All carried there by friends and family with Love.

Back to the perfect day… So Patti and I are 2/3rd into our 13 mile hike. Patti says, “This is the first hike I haven’t lost any miles on my Nike Plus” I said “I wouldn’t say that” well about a mile after that, Patti lost all her miles. It was due to human error, not totally Patti’s fault, but an unfortunate set of things happened that lead to her miles not registering. I felt bad, and Patti started stomping instead of hiking, with her arms crossed. She was very upset.

It was a beautiful day, a great hike, Patti wasn’t real happy, but towards the end of the hike she started smiling again. Tomorrow is our big Facebook advertised, “Frank & Patti's El Moro Hike” It’s the same hike we did today, kinda wanted to hike the trail before we brought up our friends on Sunday.

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.