Your On Your Own...

Since we missed last week's hike in Big Basin Redwoods State Park, we decided to do that hike for today's Your On Your Own hike. Because last night was the gala, we started about an hour later than usual. Our child care was also at the gala...

We arrived at the trailhead parking lot at about 8:45 am, and by the time we used the restroom and got on the trail it was 9:15 am. Since our time was limited by our child care and our son's afternoon T-Ball game, we chose to take the Skyline to the Sea trail (instead of the trail highlighted in purple at left). We were hoping to make it to Berry Creek Falls. As it happened, shortly after we left the trailhead, we came upon a sign indicating that the trail was closed due to a fallen massive redwood tree. It was hard to imagine something so big we couldn't climb over, but later meetings with hikers who had tried to do just that confirmed that it was really difficult.

We diverted to the Sunset trail, hoping to make Silver Falls instead. That was a longer hike and neither of us were sure we could make it in the time allotted, so we decided to put a time limit on it and go as far as we could.

The trails here are utterly beautiful and thickly carpeted with redwood debris. Occasionally we would come across fallen redwood trees, some of which snapped at the base resulting in strange and beautiful twistings. We saw a few banana slugs and lots of ferns.

I was regretting last night's marble dance floor. Although I had a wonderful time, I really felt it in my right Achilles tendon - which hasn't been bothering me at all since I learned how to stretch properly. I probably should have taken an Alleve this morning, but I didn't think about it in my rush to get out the door. Nevertheless, the pain wasn't bad enough that I needed to quit. Another problem was that I had a minor hangover from last night's festivities. However, I discovered about an hour into the hike that hiking - physical activity - solved that problem too!

Unfortunately, we didn't quite make Silver Falls before our turnback time, but we did get close - well past the junction of the Sunset Trail with the Timms Creek Trail. Given that the second half of the hike would be uphill, we opted to turn around before the Falls. We arrived back at the trailhead parking lot about 12:15 pm, just in time to pick up our son for his early afternoon T-ball game.