Take a Hike in Southern California

We fol­lowed the road up a steep incline and at the top we saw the old Arun­dell Adobe. It was pretty neat there so we sat on a long log beneath a group of old olive trees and had a snack. Three guys in a pickup stopped and asked us what we were doing there. We told them we were from Fill­more, on a hike and just wanted to see what it was like back in there. They also asked how we got there and we told them from Pole Creek. They acted as though we were not sup­posed to be there. After they left we won­dered what that was all about.

Arun­dell Adobe

When we decided to start out again, we fol­lowed the road which was about halfway up the side of the moun­tain and through some graz­ing cows. At one point we could see out over the Santa Clara River Val­ley and down into Fill­more. It was a great spot to take some pho­tos. The rest of the hike was mostly down­hill on pave­ment, but pretty steep. About two thirds of the way down, my feet were killing me. It felt like my whole body was being forced down into my toes with every step. The boys said their feet were feel­ing just fine, why? What the heck! Well, the heck was, they were wear­ing the right hik­ing boots and I was not. Actu­ally, I wasn’t wear­ing hik­ing boots at all. I was wear­ing hik­ing shoes – very com­fort­able, but only if you stayed on flat land and, they offered no ankle sup­port whatsoever.

View from above Fillmore.

We finally made our way down the hill and past a gate with about six large No Tres­pass­ing signs on it. Now we had an idea what the three guys in the truck was all about. There were no signs where we started out. Pass­ing by the gate we entered the res­i­den­tial area of Foothill and pro­ceeded on down the hill to our place. We were drenched in sweat and I was really, really glad to be off that slope. My poor toes! On the way home I vowed I was going to get some good hik­ing boots with high tops for my ankles. About that time I was think­ing pretty highly of the boots the boys were wear­ing. It was a 5 hour hike I think it might have been 5 miles. We took our time and enjoyed being out there. The hik­ing sticks I fash­ioned the night before out of fairly smooth, but old, fallen mon­key pod tree limbs from our yard worked well and were not heavy. Even though I was tired and glad to be back home, it was a good hike and we decided to take another one in two weeks. I also decided I need to get in much bet­ter shape.

I did a lot of check­ing around to see what stores in the area car­ried the same boots as the boys had. I found three stores, but two of them only had whole num­ber sizes and I needed an eleven and a half. Up until now I was walk­ing every day for 45 min­utes on the city streets in the neigh­bor­hood. There was a 20 degree climb up a hill on Foothill that winded me pretty well by the time a got to the top, but it was only about 150 feet from bot­tom to top. In order to try and get myself in bet­ter shape, I was going to start walk­ing longer dis­tances. One day I wanted to see how far I could walk for one hour at my nor­mal walk­ing cadence (Norma would describe it as speed walk­ing) but it’s not really. I took my watch and walked for exactly one hour then I turned around and came back home. That was a pretty good walk. A cou­ple days later I took the car out, reset the odome­ter and mea­sured how far I had walked. 3.5 miles to the T. This meant that my entire walk took me 2 hours to walk 7 miles.

Our next South­ern Cal­i­for­nia hike was planned for the Sespe. I look at maps a lot and a num­ber of times I had seen Sespe Hot Springs back in the Sespe. So I tried doing a search on the Inter­net for Sespe Hot Springs. Some pretty inter­est­ing arti­cles came up, but what intrigued me was a men­tion of a hike to Tar Creek and Sespe Creek.

Any of you out there who enjoy hik­ing or are just get­ting started in it, please feel free to sign-up and add your com­ments or ques­tions to my posts. All are welcome!

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