I'm dreaming of a white christmas

You may have noticed that I didn't post over the Christmas holiday. That's because I wasn't in Southern California to walk, I was roadtripping through Southern Arizona with my husband and visiting family. Strangely it's colder there than here, and there was a chance of a white Christmas while we were there, but we got a sunny Christmas Eve to visit Tombstone instead, followed by a very windy tumbleweed filled Christmas day.

There's a ton of history around the area as it's part of the American frontier, and the remains of buildings, settlements, graveyards, and entire towns are there to be discovered. My grandparents shared all sorts of local lore with us and it was great to get a good overview of the roots of Cochise county while we were there. We also had the chance to do some off-road exploring before left the neighborhood and set out for the mountains. 

On our way out of Cochise county we took the time to stop to see Americas roadside attractions at its finest. I saw "The Thing!" more than 20 years ago as a child back when it was a dusty giftshop with some back hallways. Now it's a busy stop with a full museum dedicated to the story. I was not expecting the dinosaurs. Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm not a fan of them, and that my close friends delight in gifting me with dino related goods. Imagine my surprise and dismay when we paid our admission, and walked in to this. 

Knowing that I was missing two training days while we were gone, I chose to make up for one of them by going up to the Superstition Mountains to hike. It's a really interesting part of Arizona with more legends and facts mixed together than most places can boast. There are tales of a lost gold mine, true stories of bodies of those who went searching for that mine found separated from their heads, more stories about the families who owned the land a hundred years ago, and facts about all of the hikers who go missing there every year. 

It's a beautiful place, and after signing in at the trailhead (in case you're lost or reported missing) we set our for what was supposed to be a roughly 9 mile loop. We had gotten started a little late, and knowing that we didn't want to be caught in a desert known for missing hikers, mountain lions, and rough trails, we chose what was supposed to be a moderate trail that we should have been able to knock out quickly. 

We decided to take it counter-clockwise and it started well with nice, clear paths and meeting a few people who were finishing up as we got started. It was cool out with a breeze and it felt good after the hours that we spent in the jeep throughout the past few days. It's the strangest thing out there, but every direction you looked, the clouds appear to be racing away from you. I tried to capture it on video, but nothing caught the effect as your eyes saw it. 

This was my first trail navigating entirely by cairns, the stacks of rocks that you see piled one on top of the other. I've heard for some time how frustrating it is that people take it upon themselves to build cairns for decoration on trails as personal monuments, natural graffiti to demonstrate that they were there in what they feel is an artistic way. It always felt obnoxious as it goes against the leave no trace principal when hiking. Building yourself something is definitely not leaving no trace, but on this hike I learned why it's not only rude, it's dangerous. There were several places where the trail became completely indistinguishable from the landscape around it, or turned at odd junctions where the whole ground was rocky and a path couldn't be picked out. That's when you would rely on the cairn build by a ranger or volunteer to show you where to go, except that so many times people had built their own. This meant that there were cairns that were built for fun that looked like trail markers in a desert that is known to confuse and even kill people with it's remote expanse and flash flooded washes. Can you imagine following a decorative cairn built for someones amusement only to go off trail for miles? 

At some point we realized that it was getting dark, we had reached 9 miles and the sun was sinking below the mountains and my phone with the map was dying. The nights storm clouds were rolling in fast as I looked to see that we were on the right trail, but we were miles from the end of the loop and the temperature was dropping quickly toward the 29 degrees that it was supposed to reach that night. Not wanting to alarm eachother we both calmly kept walking as my phone, and our trail map died. We stuck to the path as closely as possible, and hadn't seen another hiker for more than 2 hours. 

Finally we saw the same signpost that marked the split that we had seen when we came in, and relieved we made the last mile out to the car. All told it was nearly 12 miles and took us about 4 hours to complete. It was a near thing getting back to the Jeep before dark. 

And after all of that we found out that the snowstorm came one day after we left, another near miss. Someday we'll get that white Christmas. 

Three Mile Hill

Today was an Orange County day, so Carrie and I headed up first thing in the morning ready to hit the trail on the way to a hike that included a cave!
We met at Jo'ls place and she drove up to a park in Aliso Viejo and we started with a loop around the park and out onto the road for what became a long slog up three mile hill. Carrie and I didn't know that it was going to be three miles, and Jo'l kept us going when we started asking about the end of this steep climb. When we finally got to the top we were in a residential neighborhood getting ready to descend into a different park.

 After getting through the park we went down to a trailhead in a canyon that was nice and shady. I finally got it together and wore shorts, since I've learned not to trust the weather up in O.C. as it's never 64 and cloudy, and 75 and sunny makes for a warm day when you're going long distances. The path we were on was tree-lined and we saw several mountain bikers off and on all day.

It was nice to have water flowing since we finally got some rain in the past two weeks, and the cool ground was a really welcome change.

 We stopped for snacks of bread, cheese, and dried fruit and decided that bringing our snack game up to par has been the best plan we've made thus far. Did you know that Trader Joes carries dehydrated hibiscus flowers? They're like tart gummy food and they went so well with the rumrunner sartori that we were eating. I have no photos but trust me the people who stared a little may have been jealous and not just confused.

After eating we turned a corner and discovered that the trail to the cave was closed, and it wasn't the only one. Much of the area that we were walking through was closed for rehabilitation after the wildfire that had come though recently. We could still smell the char in the air, and the devastation was pretty obvious.

Jo'l was quick to get us reoriented and moved us onto another trail that looped around to where we needed to go. We got to stop and watch two beautiful (and healthy!) coyotes wander around for a bit. 

From there we kept seeing what looked like snake tracks but anticlimactically turned out to be children dragging sticks in the dirt. 

We did eventually get to see a cave-like thing that was created from erosion and formerly used as shelter by Native Americans passing through the area. It was no smugglers cave, and we decided that we definitely wouldn't all fit inside in our present sore state. 

 By the time we made it back to the car I had slowed down considerably, consistently falling behind Carrie and Jo'l. But it was different today, yesterday I had to concede that my Mizunos were leaving my feet sore and the same spot on my heel with a blister, so today I swapped to my Oboz which I usually use for hiking. At the end of todays walk the balls of my feet were hurting pretty badly, but they were the only part of me that was, my hips (and by extension my knees and back) were doing pretty dang good. I think it has a lot to do with the structure of these shoes, so I'm going to try to find some kind of cushion for only the ball of my foot and see where it goes from there. Fingers crossed for a solution, because after 22 miles in 2 days I'm walking fairly well!

Like ridin' around on railcars and workin' long days

After talking about how to arrive at the 20 mile mark the weekend before we leave Carrie discovered that we have 11 weeks until it's time to go which means that we'll need to increase by one mile every weekend from this week forward.

Our first 11 mile walk was on a San Diego weekend and Carrie couldn't make it, but my husband Sean came with me to meet Jo'l at the San Marcos Rail Trail. After getting lost finding the parking lot we got started at the Palomar College station and headed East.

In the very beginning we passed a lot of commercial buildings with the rail on one side, and the road on the other. The sprinter came by regularly as we went along. 

Eventually we turned right and dipped down onto a shaded path that continued to follow the railway, which was a relief because it was warming up pretty fast by that point and the shade was definitely a welcome relief. We crossed the bridge that was in all of the iconic photos from Alltrails, and it was nice but a lot smaller than the internet would have you believe. 

After crossing we left the shade and wound up following the tracks into a very industrial area that was significantly less picturesque. When we stopped for snacks things were a little questionable, so we elected to  snack while standing instead of sitting on the iffy bench. 

On the way back I realized that my hips were giving me trouble, but it wasn't until mile 8.5 which was a great change given that the first walk we did at Lake Miramar had me hurting at mile 6. 

We crossed the bridge on the way back, grateful again for the shade after miles of sunshine. 

It felt like a long way back to the parking lot, given that I was already hurting, but we made it. We even saw a little bit of fall along the way which is not something that usually happens around here. 

For lunch we went to a little food mart and taco counter called Primo Foods in Vista. Tacos, BBQ, tamales, ceviche, everything good you could want is in this market. 

Nice to meet you anyway

I suppose it's about time for some introductions that go beyond me flashing my x-rays in your face, and vaguely referring to the other people who show up on all of these walks as simply "My Friends"

I'm Lacey, I'm a bibliophile living in Southern California with my husband Sean, I love wine, the color black, and podcasts about murder and science fiction. I work as an accountant to pay for my cat habit, and currently have 4 delightful felines that run my household.

This is Carrie,  she lives nearby with her husband Chris and little white boxer Pearl. She's the only one of us who's walked a Camino before as she completed the entirety of the French route last year. She is a world traveler, a master martini maker, and the best gluten free baker I've ever known. She also happens to be my best friend, so I could be biased.

This is Jo'l, she's Carries sister and is incredibly fit! She lives a little North of us with her neighbors outdoor cat, Dan. She's usually the pace setter, and is also a fantastic dancer and aspiring at-home tea latte artist. Her energy and enthusiasm keep things moving when we've slowed to a trudge, also she can identify a coyote at startling distances.

So that's us! We'll be training together pretty much every weekend from now until April when the three of us leave for Porto.

One out of Two

Work this last week has been absolutely insane: 14 hour days, late nights, early mornings, and not enough down time resulted in me calling it in for Saturday. I took the morning to sleep in and recover while my friends walked and explored downtown San Diego. I'm sorry to have missed to day, but I'm glad I took the time to sleep and recover a little.

Sunday we were back to it in Dana Point with a new walk that took us all over the city and up and down so many hills and stairs.

 It seems like most of our time was spent along the harbor today. There was some great dog watching available, and the tiny Christmas sweaters were out in full force. At some point we passed so many stations for the docks that had the same ice machine and washers, while seeing the same worried chihuahua over and over, that it started to feel like we were trapped in a loop.

Everyone was tired today. My friends put in more miles than they needed to yesterday and I was feeling it after a week being pretty sedentary at work. After stopping for coffee and snacks we had a little bit of a hard time getting going again, but we made it to our 10 mile goal with smiles on our faces ready to go home, shower, and flop onto the couch to recover. 

I did exactly that, then logged into my fitbit account to discover that all of my data has been erased, and we all know that your steps don't count if your apps don't show them. It's a good thing we're doing it again next weekend. 

If you wanna walk, baby let's walk

December 1st got here in a hurry and the three of us were set to walk at Miramar Lake in San Diego. The Lake is only 5 miles, so we planned to go around twice to get all of our miles in for the day. It's a quiet, fairly flat circuit with bike access and fishing docks.
We finished the first lap feeling good and stopped for snacks, a little stiff but ready for the second go around. About halfway through the second lap things started feeling a little more difficult. We could feel where our blisters were getting started and for me my hips were started to protest. The end of our 10 miles was so welcome, and we stopped at the end for a photo and to talk about lunch because of course.

We headed over to Mira Mesa and stopped at Pacific Poke to grab something to eat after all of the walking and it was great! Definitely stop by if you're a poke fan. From there we went home to get some rest and get ready for 10 more miles Sunday. 

The next morning came early, especially since it came with a drive up to Dana Point. Our walk started in the Suburban area of the Lantern District and wound through neighborhoods until we reached Laguna Niguel and a series of trails and tunnels. 

We made our way back down to the coast and hugged the coastline for a few miles until it was time to head back up into the Lantern District of Dana Point.  

Heading back up sounds like no big deal, but by the time we were on the beach I was struggling a little. I had some blisters from Saturday that I had taped when we stopped for our snack break at the halfway point that were making themselves known, and my hips had started swelling a little. More than anything it's what gets into your head, you get tired, you get sore, and you start to think about what it would feel like to stop and sit down. I just started saying "keep going" over and over in my head and by the time that we were going up the last set of stairs to get up to the street level I was whispering it out loud and laughing with my friends about how many more hills we had to go. 

At the end it was hard but so satisfying. We made it those first 20 miles, and celebrated with lunch at the same restaurant that we went to on our planning day. La Columbiana is definitely going to show up here more than once. 

The day ended in laughter and shared blister prevention plans. 

Between Two Lungs

So training didn't start Monday, pneumonia started Monday.
I spent more than six weeks living on antibiotics, tessalon perles, and ineffective homeopathic cough syrup.

Between being put on hold by the first surgeon, recovering from the arthrograms, and pneumonia I've been away from Pilates and walking for more than 3 months. On one hand it was a bummer to be down for so long, on the other hand I got to wear my pajamas to work on Halloween. 

Training day is looming large on December 1st!