Staying Local

Not ready to hit the trails. Still holding onto my seat from the 2023 wild ride. I’ve got a tree up still in my living room (fully decorated) and other remnants of holiday decorations around the house. I finally threw out the Christmas wreaths yesterday. I am going to miss that lovely pine smell. (All the more reason to get back to the mountains!)

We are only one week into 2024, I have a little time still to get organized and  to clean up the 2023 mess. The longer I wait to hit those trails though, the less capable I am to actually do it. Every day I don't get my legs moving up a mountain, I grow weaker, both mentally and physically. I can catch up on the mental fitness other ways (though that has been rare lately) and I try to do things that give me some fitness -- like take the stairs or park at the far end of the parking lot. Walking to the grocery store or post office is also a great way to keep some type of physical fitness (though it is waning!). So, I’m pretty much staying local lately with promises and hopes of at least hitting the trails a couple times before spring semester begins. Until then, I’ve been staying local. We’ve got lots of walking material here in my hometown, Dana Point, even some dirt trails. This week on one of my errand walkabouts, I decided to detour to the Headlands and mosey about the roped trails overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It was a beautiful sight. A great small start to getting my feet back to dirt.

Moving into Spring

Winter time in Southern California is not very wintery. Sure there’s snow on the mountains, some mountains, not my mountains. But here on the coast, I’d say we’ve moved right into spring 2023.

4 miles in the local hills:

Las Ramblas in Between Rains

Well, heck, we've had a lot of rain lately in the state of California, the place that supposidly doesn't get any rain. Only problem with the no-rain claim is that I have lived here all of my life, and we get plenty of rain EVENTUALLY.  People just have short memories, else they are just too young to remember the many, many times we've had lots of rain. 

It's a good thing that we're finally getting rain. We've been in a drought for a while. The creeks are now all flowing, water falls are falling. Everything is green. It's beautiful. But most of the time on our rain reprieve days, my local trails are closed due to "wet and muddy conditions." I had a hunch though that Las Ramblas Trail wasn't closed. Las Ramblas trailhead is at the edge of Dana Point, right on the border of San Juan Capstrano. The trails associated with Las Ramblas run just inland, overlooking Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente. The view of the Pacific Ocean is immense. But there are no trees. Literally, no trees. There's a few tall shrubs here and there, but really not much shade to speak of. This is why I rarely ever hit Las Ramblas. But there are no rangers for these trails (that I know of, as I believe they are city trails), which meant that possibly they were not closed due to wet and muddy conditions.

Las Ramblas did not disappoint. It was open as I had hoped. It was cold, it was muddy, and at times it was gray. But add to that gray, a sea of green -- and that's not a sea as in the ocean (the ocean was a silver-gray). The sea of green belonged to the hills, they were covered with fresh new growth. Of course, the dirt trails were completely saturated, which meant mud. Boy was it muddy. 

In all I got in 7.59 miles with 1,591' of elevation gain.