Take a Hike in Southern California

Since my last post about my exer­cise reg­i­men, I have lost another 18 pounds. So that is a total of 33 pounds since I started hik­ing. This is due to a com­bi­na­tion of diet change and my walk­ing. Per the diet change, I stopped munch­ing on peanuts and pret­zels all day while sit­ting at my com­puter. I now have a big bowl of oat­meal, no sugar, with a heap­ing table­spoon of ground flax and a banana for break­fast. I didn’t eat break­fast before. I also cut up two-three apples for lunch. I usu­ally had a lunch­meat sand­wich for lunch before. And then I eat my usual two plates of food for din­ner. I have also cut down on my wine drink­ing in the evening. I now drink my usual two glasses of wine on the week­end instead of every night. Read the rest of this entry »

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I’ve recently thrown a very large boul­der in my path to hik­ing and then blog­ging about it. Norma and I have been spend­ing a lot of time over the past weeks try­ing to fig­ure out how to bring more busi­ness into our busi­ness. So…we are writ­ing our own busi­ness blog. We started our first blog just this past sum­mer. Blogs are quite the dif­fer­ent ani­mal. Up until now we have been cre­at­ing stan­dard (sta­tic) web­sites and kind of ignor­ing the blo­gos­phere out there. Not that we dis­liked blogs – we just didn’t know much about cre­at­ing them. One day we got a call and a poten­tial client insisted that she wanted a blog and wanted us to cre­ate it for her. We did a lot of soul search­ing, and Inter­net research, and stum­bled off the band­wagon. We decided to delve deep into the heart of it and have been there ever since. Read the rest of this entry »

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As I related to you on Sat­ur­day, I went on my first trail main­te­nance foray on Sun­day with some mem­bers of the Com­mu­nity Hik­ing Club based in Santa Clarita. It was on the Canyon Trail in Placerita Canyon which starts at the Vis­i­tors Cen­ter. When we got to the area of the trail to fix, the leader of our lit­tle ‘chain gang’ had been notic­ing in the past that peo­ple rid­ing horses were cut­ting off the trail and down into the stream and then cut­ting back onto the trail. This was dam­ag­ing an endan­gered frog habi­tat (Pacific Cho­rus Frog) and needed to be stopped. She also fig­ured the rea­son they were doing this was because the trail was too high and needed to be low­ered. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tomor­row I’m going to give back to all of those that have gone before me. I’m going to spend the day help­ing oth­ers per­form some trail main­te­nance so that future hik­ers can enjoy hik­ing the trails in our area of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia as much as I have. I have no idea what to expect. I was told to bring myself and my reg­u­lar hik­ing gear, plenty of water and snacks and some heavy gloves. They will pro­vide all of the tools.

I’m actu­ally look­ing for­ward to this new expe­ri­ence – see­ing how oth­ers work together in the great out­doors. Since we have a fairly large lot with quite a few large trees on it, I spend plenty of time work­ing out­side try­ing to keep our place look­ing half-ways decent. It is espe­cially task­ing after a storm. I have a pretty good size trailer I fill up on a reg­u­lar basis and haul off to a nearby recy­cling business.

I’ll let you know in a cou­ple of days how it all went.

Do any of you out there help with trail main­te­nance? Tell us all about your experiences.

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Sorry for not post­ing here in awhile. Tyler and Gar­rett have gone back to school and since they are both work­ing full time jobs as well as attend­ing school full time, their avail­abil­ity for hik­ing our South­ern Cal­i­for­nia trails has been very lim­ited. In that light I searched on the Inter­net for some local hik­ing clubs to go hik­ing with when­ever the boys can’t. I found the fol­low­ing clubs that would suit me in the Santa Clarita and Valen­cia area:

Com­mu­nity Hik­ing Club of Santa Clarita
http://www.communityhikingclub.com/

The Valen­cia Hik­ing Meetup
http://www.meetup.com/HikeItUp/

There are more if you are inter­ested in hik­ing with small chil­dren, dogs, and on week­days, etc. Just type in your zip code.
http://www.meetup.com/

I have been on a hike to Piru Fish­bowls with the Com­mu­nity Hik­ing Club and will be post­ing on that hike shortly.

If any of you know of any other hik­ing clubs in this area, please let all of us know.

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Purple-flowered poodle-dog bush, grow­ing in burn areas, is haz­ard to humans.

Poodle-dog bush flow­ers (danger!!!)

A pretty purple-flowered bush bloom­ing on the hills of the burned areas is a dan­ger to peo­ple, accord­ing to the Depart­ment of Forestry. As a result of South­ern California’s recent fires, hik­ers need to be aware of poodle-dog bush grow­ing along the trails.

The flower, com­monly known as poodle-dog bush, is an irri­tant akin to poi­son oak, said forester Eric Oldar.

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