*whew* what a weekend! marla and liz are prepping for their lost coast backpack trip (fourth of july week), and decided that they needed a camping/hiking trip to pinnacles this weekend. they invited me to come along, since i'm such a fun and exciting person (heh, sure), and i really needed it so i went. i miss camping! i haven't been in way too long. this wasn't exactly rustic, since we were in a campground (so, car camping), but i miss camping in general. i miss going up to hume lake (my family used to go religiously, 2-3 weekends every year, but haven't been since my grandfather died in 1995. well, okay, once, but not since then)...

anyway, so the three of us headed down to pinnacles friday evening, and made our leisurely way out to campsite, set up, cooked dinner, etc. then saturday, we went hiking. all day. 13.5 miles later, we trudged wearily back to the campground, hoping to get a little swim time in (there's a pool at the campground). no such luck, so we took army showers and headed back to camp for a nice dinner of cheddarwurst, corn on the cob (which we were too tired to eat), and s'mores. yum! we all passed out pretty quickly, since we were so exhausted. it was awesome, though. if you take a look at the pinnacles trail map, we took this route:
Pinnacles Campground (outside east entrance) -- Bench Trail -- Old Pinnacles Trail -- Balconies Caves Trail -- Juniper Canyon Trail -- High Peaks Trail (which takes a few different loops that it's hard to distinguish on that map, but we basically did the loop up then back towards Scout Peak, not the trail that goes towards the east entrance) -- Rim Trail -- Moses Spring Trail (we tried to do the Bear Gulch Caves but they were closed, to protect habitat for Townsend's Big-eared bats) -- Bear Gulch Trail -- Bench Trail back to the campground. essentially, we did almost every trail in the park. yikes! more than we intended, i think, but we wanted to get to the caves, the high peaks, the reservoir, and the visitor center, so hey. it was good for the body and spirit, though, despite the rampant soreness.

on a side note (with thanks to liz who reminded me), we saw lots of wildlife! tons of birds (magpies, woodpeckers, quail, a roadrunner, turkey vultures, etc), blue-belly lizards (actual common name: Western fence lizard, genus Sceloporus), two tiny treefrogs, cavity-nesting bird nest with eggs!, a snake, deer, bats, a wild pig (which evidently like to run rampant in the campground), and lots of skeeters (ouch!). woo hoo!

we're already talking about several more trips this summer... possibly backpacking skyline to the sea (which was my first ever backpacking trip with the hungarian scouts when i was about 11!), maybe trying half dome later in the summer, camping down at julia pfeiffer (big sur area). backpacking is a little more arduous for me, since i don't have the right gear (except for my kick-ass sleeping bag. woo hoo!), but i can do car camping any time. :) i'm excited! i need to get back into it, i miss being outdoors as much as i used to be.

and then, of course, father's day. happy father's day to all the fathers out there! :)