People Getting Loose Y’all*

I was on a hiking trail yesterday morning, instead of writing a blogpost. Not a bad decision, although it was mighty chilly. I don’t think I’ve done an entire hike with my fleece on except for one in the snow. It’s a good thing I don’t live somewhere colder.

The hike was out to Kitchen Creek Falls, near Campo. It wasn’t particularly long…maybe 5 1/2 miles or a bit more. There were a few climbing bits, but I managed. I did expect more water, but that’s OK. It was still pretty.

First of all, I got up early enough to see the sunrise. On a Saturday. Ugh. That part sucks.

But it meant I had most of the day after the hike to lie around and pretend I was being productive, when I was really just futzing and reading my book. I guess that’s a thing.

Both the men who live here were supposed to go, but the older back damaged himself helping to dig and fill a giant hole so we could have the water back on. The younger back came with me though…

I used to hike all the time with this group, but my work life has evolved in a way that makes it more difficult to do so. I’m supposed to go every 90 days to stay in the group, but the leader is nice to me, so even though I haven’t shown up since August, I haven’t been kicked out yet. I try to come! But it’s not always possible.

We hiked part of the Pacific Crest Trail…I’ve been on this hike before, as part of a longer stretch of the PCT…

Although it was almost 5 years ago.

Oh yeah, there was this plant with these weird growths on it by the car park.

They were soft and probably filled with spiders.

Everything was very sage gray in color. And it was cold…low to mid 30s with a minor threat of rain or snow.

But in the end, we avoided most of that moisture, except on the drive back. The first part of the hike goes under Interstate 8…

It takes a while to get away from the noise of the freeway…there are a couple of gates…

No big deal in terms of a trail…mostly flat after a few switchbacks…

Greener than usual…we’re heading up there somewhere…

I love to hike. I wish I could do more of it.

It’s been a wet year for us…almost 10 inches down on the flat, so more up here…

Not much for other places, but we are dry. There’s the freeway.

Here’s where I was…

This group likes to take photos.

Finally we got to the falls…

Although there was a bit of a climb first…

To pole or not to pole? It was a crapshoot…needed them for part of it and not for the rest. You can see how far down we’re going.

Down by the water…

The rocks are very slippery…

Down there is another larger waterfall. I didn’t go down that way.

Didn’t trust my ability to get back up. The boychild is way the fuck down there…

I stayed up top and felt the temperatures drop again.

So we came out and headed back…

Just a few droplets though…

I would have been OK with some snowflakes at this point, but no.

Just a pretty view of the trail.

I really do love manzanitas…and one weird geocache.

OK then. We drove back home and showered and ate and then I tried to be a productive member of society by wrapping this giraffe, one of my Christmas presents…

He still needs a mane and a tail, but I have to wrap the other one first. Yes. I’m weird. I just liked the kit.

While I was putting stuff away, I found this. Sigh.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about trying to find all the blocks and threads for this quilt I must have started in 2008 or so. And I thought I’d found everything, but I was missing some of the threads. So I ordered new ones. Well here they are…in an entirely different container with another block that’s not finished. (Bangs head on table). OK then. It’s not the end of the world.

We eventually went out and to a bunch of art things…more of those later, when I feel like resizing all those photos. We stopped once for a drink…here’s my artsy photo…

And the photobombed one…

You should always be with someone who has a good sense of humor.

Who knew wine came in a can? Well. Lots of you probably. This was with dinner, over by another set of art things. We came back and I was tired and basically pretended to be functional until it was time to go to sleep. I guess that’s the way some days go. Today isn’t a whole lot better so far, but let’s hope I get that under control. I have a huge pile of grading and quilting to do. I do have tomorrow off, but there’s a medical thing in the middle of it. Whoopee! Love those. Not.

But a day of hiking and art is not a bad thing.

*The Trammps, Disco Inferno

Overfeeling

Hey. So. The girlchild is on a rampage. I think she has screamed at me for extended periods of time every day since Thursday. I am so removed from my own emotions at the moment, at least in terms of being angry/irritated with her, that I can do nothing but teacher voice. Calm. Reasonable. Repeating the same thing over and over again. Offering two choices. Calm. Yeah. So I know I wasn’t the easiest teenager in the world (ask my mom; she’ll tell you), but mom actually said she was sorry to me tonight, it was that bad. And it’s stupid stuff. Time home. Driving places. Communicating. Planning ahead. Cleaning up her crap. Not taking responsibility.

All normal parent stuff. The stuff we all do. All the time.

Problem is, at the end of it, I’m pretty much empty of the ability to deal with my own shit. It just takes it out of me. I can’t deal at all. I can’t even think straight. I just used up all my strength on not screaming at her (I was not so successful Friday night, when she really pushed too far and I went off.). It’s OK. This is how she pushes away. This is how she can leave and go far away to college. This makes it easier for her. Not so much for me, but hey…I’m the fucked-up overfeeling one anyway. It’s not about me.

I will survive it. I have to. I don’t have a choice.

I hiked this morning…more on that later. It was pretty good, a little short. The weather here has cooled down a bit, but it was still in the mid-80s…a little on the warm side for serious hiking.

I managed ironing eventually, later than I had wanted…

It’s always later than what I want. My own fault. I don’t remember what I was doing. I’m sure it was crucial. Oh yeah, it was. I made apple crisp (fuck you, I deserve it after the three-day-long screamfest of Mom Knows Diddly Squat) and I meditated and I cleaned house a little (a very little…don’t hyperventilate). I did some computer stuff for school.

Anyway, I didn’t get much ironed…a uterus and related parts, a spider and its web, some nipples, and lips. Exciting stuff. I got tired. There are lots of pieces. Plus the cat really really wanted to sit on the ironing board, and when I kicked her back onto the chair she normally prefers, she jumped up in front of the computer and glared Kitty Glares at me until I was done and she could climb back up there again.

It’s funny, because I’ve been ironing for days and she’s shown no interest in being on the ironing board until today.

But there she is, sending me her best Fuck You looks.

I really am tired tonight. Something about Saturday nights makes me want to stay up way too late, and unfortunately, I still had to be up this morning.

The pile of fabrics I’m using grows higher…

Maybe taking over the room.

OK, I’m falling asleep sitting here. Brain is sending a pretty strong message to go to bed and sleep it off. You were trying to come up with one single positive thing about today…OK, girlchild makes awesome penne with vodka sauce and there are lots of leftovers (do not imagine the boychild at this time. Yes, he is capable of inhaling the whole batch of leftovers without any effort at all, but with any luck, you’ll beat him to it tomorrow morning because you will be getting up before him). See, I can be positive. Penne Positive.

I forgot to post this panorama of the Kitchen Creek Falls area from a few weeks back…

OK. Brain to bed. Rest of me too. Maybe I’ll have more energy tomorrow. Right now I’m too tired to even focus my eyes on the letters.

PCT Continued: Lake Morena to Kitchen Creek

I’m behind in documenting hikes…a couple of Saturdays back, I hiked the section of the Pacific Crest Trail from Lake Morena to Kitchen Creek, including a side trip to Kitchen Creek Falls. It was about 10.5 miles and took us approximately 5 hours with a couple of stops for lunch and exploring falls.

This hike was beautiful, roaming through a variety of landscapes, from oak-dotted meadows…

That seemed to stretch for miles…

Into the mountains on either side

There were wildflowers everywhere of all types…

Into more desert-like areas…

This section of the PCT is not particularly difficult…

The day was warmish in the beginning…I’m sure it’s a bit hellish in the summer.

We did climb through a few mountainous areas…

Again with the funky flowers…

An arch in the rocks…

And long trails like this…

My first official viewing of a California Horny Toad…

which are really lizards…and lots of yucca in bloom…fascinating plants.

Lots of long vistas with mountains rising in the distance, as we hiked across the valley…

This butterfly landed on the thistle just as I took the photo…

The rock structures in the area were strange at times…

And succulents nestled in rocky cracks

A long stretch of rocky ground…

I think turkey vultures were our only bird visitors…

We were a medium-sized group, about 16 hikers.

Apparently yucca flowers are edible…

They are also beautiful.

This is looking down at the valley from where we came…

We hiked towards Interstate 8, moving north on the trail.

The day was beautiful…and that bridge down there on the left in the middle? I think we go under it at some point.

This section of the trail is fairly well signposted. Here we had traveled 3.5 miles from Lake Morena.

Some signs are less official-looking…

Here’s that bridge from below…

Underneath the bridge, there was some graffiti…this looks like something my students would draw.

The other side was a bit more acceptable PCT graffiti…

We crossed what looked like a dry river bed on the other side…

And another sign showing 2 miles to our lunch spot at Boulder Oaks…

It was in the high 70s that day, maybe a little warmer…

At least at the beginning…

More oaks everywhere…

These trees are older than my parents, I think…

More green meadows…

Some trees had lost their will to stand upright…

I was really tired for this hike; I can only blame jet lag from traveling back to New York (and maybe staying up for 24 hours straight on Thursday).

We stopped at the campground to eat our official lunch.

There were cars parked here…and we saw a lot of runners on the next section of the trail. If you just wanted to go to Kitchen Creek Falls, you could leave from here (not sure of the mileage).

There are gates along the trail…

This section ran next to and then under Interstate 8…

We are finally north of the freeway, heading into the Lagunas…

There’s the 8 going east…

A rosy boa!

I’ve never seen one in the wild…

Manzanita tucked into a rock…

This section got more up into the mountains, but still wasn’t a difficult hike…

We were pretty stretched out here…I had wobbly legs for part of this.

And then the rain cloud started to wander in…

But looking towards the freeway looks more like summer.

Hey! It’s my old school…I used to teach out there…Mountain Empire High School (I actually taught at the middle school, which was on the high-school property and is now closed).

We lined up for a photo…

Here it is from below…

Again, that rain cloud is lurking…I think it dropped about 4 drops on us.

It looks ominous, though. We were trying to find the path off to Kitchen Creek Falls on this section…

We actually asked for directions and then headed down a hill…

A slightly steep hill…heading for that section in the middle…

The falls weren’t particularly large, but they were pretty…

A snail…Ken kept finding wildlife for me…

The rocks on the walls surrounding the falls had plants and lichen wedged in between them…

Water bugs…

Exploring the falls…

And some form of squishy freshwater algae (squishiness demonstrated)…

It was a lovely place to hang out for a bit…

Different flowers to what was up on the path…

It had been a while since we’d had rain, so the falls weren’t particularly wild…

But the rocks surrounding the falls area are certainly interesting.

Yes, they are perusing an actual paper map…

This little guy was watching us from up on the hillside…

More rocks and plants…the weather by now had cooled considerably…

Cactus blooming…Southern California is an interesting mix of plant life…

The water colors the rocks.

While some nap…

The light was interesting for the last section of the hike…I think the last section was only 2 miles, but it seemed to go on forever…not because it was boring, but because I was tired.

Somehow I ended up between the speedy hikers and the slow photograph-taking hikers…

It gave me a chance to quietly walk and take photos…note the lime-green lichens…

And to focus on some flowers

Way up in the distance, you can see the speedy hikers. They would occasionally stop and wait for me and make sure the last group was within sight or hearing range, and then they would set off again.

At some point on most hikes, you just want to get done.

Although this was still beautiful.

I had to stop to see the flowers more often…

See? They’re waiting for me again. My legs? Still tired. Couldn’t keep up with them.

There’s more of Kitchen Creek…

And finally! We came out to the end of the trail…this is the group behind me…

And the last group finally making it out.

We were dirty and tired, but it was a good hike. Good weather, beautiful landscape and flowers, not particularly difficult (as long as you’ve had enough sleep, I think). I’ve now done 21.5 miles of the PCT…only 2,628.5 miles to go! Or something like that. We did shuttle cars for this trip so we could hike through the whole section and not double back. The section we’re doing in a couple weeks will be north of this…and I think I’ve already done part of it over 10 years ago, right after the fires went through that area.