Today was a magical hiking day. Julie, Gabriella and I hiked part of the Bay Area Ridge Trail near Woodside, in the Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve. It is a gorgeous place to hike, with lots of beautiful towering redwoods, luscious ferns and colorful wildflowers. The weather was a total 180 from our hike last Saturday, even though we were only a few miles away from the starting point of last week’s hike. Today it was foggy, windy, and cold. The fog was so thick we got rained on anytime we were under the trees. It was nice to be bundled up, I felt like I had more energy in the chilly air. It also helped that the scenery was so intoxicating with lush, green forest all around us.
The majority of the 6 mile hike was on hiking only trails which we always prefer. We were giddy with happiness at being in such a gorgeous place. We saw a huge banana slug, lots of wildflowers, and some wonderful little streams.
After we got done with that hike we decided to complete the quarter-mile of the ridge trail that we had missed out on last week. We drove over to Skylawn Cemetery and had a better look around there, it is such a lovely place. Afterwards we walked the final section of that part of the ridge trail.
We all still felt like hiking some more so headed to an offshoot of the trail we did last week. It was just over a mile up to the spot where the rangers had given us cold water last Saturday. We definitely didn’t need to worry about water this time as the wind was blowing so hard it made a moaning noise as it went through the wires overhead, and the fog was so thick you couldn’t see very far down the trail. It was a completely different feeling from last week and we just laughed at what a change it was. We also felt much better seeing how much easier it was for us to hike up in the cooler weather. The hill we climbed was much steeper than anything we had done the week before yet we had no problem getting up it. Yeah!
I unfortunately the drive back home took over three times longer than it did for me in the morning as the traffic in San Francisco was horrendous. I guess that’s what I should expect on a Sunday afternoon in the summer. I was grateful to finally get home and take a shower. It had been a wonderful day, and I felt very happy and peaceful from our time in the forest.
