so early

Ahoy,

Some friends and I decided to get up at an ungodly hour to go on a hike. First off, we could beat the heat projected for later that day, and secondly, we had a schedule to work around. The morning air was still chilly and delightful. The sea fog was still ashore so I loved that it wasn't sunny. There is a certain stillness and quietness in the morning mist that is totally worth being awake at that time. There was a deer running around as we were starting our hike up in the street. Parking is down the hill, so you have to walk up past the mcmansions to get to the trail.

The trail is pretty flat and covered most of the way, so heat exhaustion was not my main concern. First you'll come up to the lower falls and a swing. The fall is a trickle and not very impressive, which is typical for most waterfall hikes in SoCal right now. Some of us continued the "trail" to the upper falls, which involved a lot of scrambling and sliding. My friend M braved it for part of the way and stopped at a viewpoint to let us continue. What a trooper. I made a wrong turn following some people to a wire fence and slid my way back down. The upper falls weren't too far away, and were an even less impressive drip of water, but the rock scramble is a fun way to get places, so I'm glad I did it.

We were finished pretty early in the day and I spent the rest of the day waiting for A to do car stuff. It was magical. Cars. Car maintenance.

captivatingly driven,
jt