We want to spend the final couple of days with Vicky’s parents, so planned on staying at a few California state parks on our way up the coast to Carmel where they live.
The first one we thought we would stay at is Montana de Oso, which means Mountain something. It is right along the coast, right off of Highway 1, which we will take to Carmel.
We couldn’t get a reservation, though, so were worried about getting a spot. We shouldn’t have been. The campground was only about 20% full, even though we arrived on a weekend. And it has a good set of rules about generators AND it has recycling, something that we have not always found in the past several weeks (a topic for another discussion). And the visitor center had the best hiking map of anyplace we had been.
There seemed to be several hikes that originated from this park, so we settled in for two or three days. Since we had to travel and then make a stop for groceries today we decided to only take a 5-mile walk along the bluff instead of doing a real hike today. The shoreline is beautiful, as the photos show.
Our second day we did an 8 mile hike, along the Coon Creek and Rattlesnake Flats Trails. These were fairly easy trails, with OK views. Nothing spectacular, but still a nice day, and 5+ hours of aerobic exercise.
We had parked the bikes about two miles from our camper, at the trailhead. And it started raining on our way back. We got soaked!
Remember how I said this park had great generator hours? Well, on our second morning I went over to someone who had a big 5th wheel with a huge American flag flying 30 feet above it and whose generator was noisily humming away early in the morning and reminded him about them. He feigned ignorance (but said the Ranger had stopped by his place the night before to tell him to stop using his generator, so he clearly knew the hours). What he knows is that every park has its own generator hours. When I mentioned that generator hours didn’t start until 10:00 a.m., he whined “but what about my coffee?”
I casually mentioned that we had some.
Someday I’m going to get beat up, aren’t I?
Well, the next day was our big hike here. We are getting into a rhythm with hikes where about every three days we can take one with lots of challenge in terms of distance and elevation gain, with the days in between for biking, traveling, or easier hikes.
Today’s hike was about 10 miles with about 1600 foot elevation gain, with all of that gain being in the first five miles.
It was spectacular. High meadows, deep ravines, deep greens, with views of high peaks and the ocean. It was one of our favorites of the entire trip. We walked for a couple of miles along a ridge that kept teasing us—letting us think we were finally getting to Oat’s Peak, but then when we got to the top showing us that we had another one to go.
Here I am at the top, waving to Vicky. This finally was the peak:
One nice thing about this park is that there are picnic tables in places one usually doesn’t find them. High on bluffs, deep into walks, along the beach, etc. We joked that at the top of Oat’s Peak there would probably be a picnic table, and, what do you know: there was! It was a little the worse for wear, but someone had made creative use out of it what was left of it to make a bench.
That’s where we enjoyed our lunch—at the top of the world, with probably nobody else within 4 miles, a nice breeze, sun. This is why I had three foot operations, and why we have a camper, and why we seek out these kinds of hikes and will need to get in as many as we can before we are too old to do them. I wish I was a better writer and could better describe what it was like for us to sit there together and eat that lunch Vicky had prepared. A peanut butter sandwich and apple slice never tasted so good.
It was a loop trail, the best kind, because the walk down is often completely different from the ascent. This one was very nice, and VERY steep. We went down 1300 feet in about a mile. Good thing we both hike with trekking poles.
As we descended, we walked through several groves of trees. Most interesting.
Ever since we passed the sign on our way out of the desert showing the presence of wild burros, I have been attempting to teach Vicky how to say the word “burro,” as in the film Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I figure she should know how to do this since we are in the Sierra Madres. She is making a lot of progress, although her temptation is to pronounce it “burrrrrow” instead of “booorrro” like in the film.
After we get this down, we are going to start on "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!"
She should have learned to say this when she was a Seattle cop, don’t you think?
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