Happy Trails again. . .

Jimbo, Jessica and the boys drove out to my place today and we went to Briones Regional Park for a hike there and then came back to my apartment for dinner.

Charlie was very energetic.  He wanted to hold one of my hiking poles, so just like I did a few weeks ago at George Miller Trail I shortened one of them up and gave it to him to hold.

He got tired of walking after a very short time, tho, and got carried along with Teddy in a Bijorn.

We were just hiking along when we noticed "Ferdinand' grazing alongside the trail:

His lady-friends were relaxing nearby in the shade. . . .  We nearly tripped over them - it was so shady there and they were so quiet - before we noticed all of them.

J&J pointed out a ball of Mistletoe on a tree.  It was a bit far above them, but they took advantage of the opportunity nonetheless:

Jimbo took this shot of me, looking like a grizzled old California gold-rush prospector. . .

We continued onward, uphill, till we reached a road and some private property - a beautiful Hacienda type of homestead out there in the middle of nowhere.  I now realize that I should have taken a photo of it; it was very nicely situated on a hillside.  But we continued on another, narrower trail inside the park still going uphill.

I told Jamie that there seemed to be a lot of "bear-scat" along these trails.  But, obviously it wasn't any animal that wild. . . .  Ferdie and Elsie and Bossie and Flossie et al apparently had climbed to this elevation at sometime recently.

The view - as on many trails - was spectacular - with Mt. Diablo off in the distance again.

No matter what direction you looked, it was all great.  If it weren't for the high-tension power lines (and the fact that the mountains are a bit shorter and that the family's a bit smaller) I told Jess I felt like I was leading the VonTrapps over the mountains to Switzerland.  :-)

Climb every mountain,
Search high and low,
Follow every byway,
Every path you know.

So after all this we found out that our little narrow trail was not really on the trail map.  At the end of it we had to climb down a very steep embankment (I made very good use of the trekking-poles at that point) and we did "ford a stream" - tho it was a dry arroyo stream-bed - to get back to the main trail.

Have to go back to this park soon.  It is a huge park and there are plenty more trails there.

After all this, we drove back to my place and had dinner - Thai chicken with peanuts that Jess had prepared and that I had thrown into the Crock-Pot earlier.  I had added some lime juice to it - and maybe a few too many peanuts - and maybe too much cilantro.  But it was good. . .  The basic ingredients that Jess had put into it made it pretty hard for me to mess up.

Next up on this blog will likely be my latest project.  I am putting together a "Murphy Bed" in a convenient space between my dining room and living room.  It'll take a bit of doing.  I ordered it online at Costco's website and it arrived here last week, in three huge packages.  It will be an IKEA-like assembly experience, but much more complicated than any IKEA stuff I've yet put together.  Should be interesting, but not as easy as Do-Re-Mi. . .