Killer Hike Part 1 3-12

Yesterday I took about 150 pictures on our hike to the top of Telegraph Hill. I’ve whittled them down to less than 40 or so but I am going to break this up into three parts. The first part being the trek across the dessert to the beginning of the steep trail up the mountain; the second part will be of the grueling, slow, determined climb up the mountain and the views from the top; and the third will be the trek back to the truck across the lonely dessert. We were the last ones back!

We left the truck around 9:30. I had on my hiking pants with the extra big pockets and the legs that zip off and I had the pockets stuffed with what I felt was necessary: lots of tissue, lip balm, ibuprofen, pepper spray in case we came across a crazed javelina, I.D. and insurance card (in case our broken bodies were found at the bottom of a cliff or skewered a top a cactus), my keys and Larry’s asthma inhaler. We had applied mega strength sun screen before we left and I was wearing my broad brimmed floppy hat. We had our walking sticks to fend off attacking rattlers and our bottles of water, oh and I of course had my camera slung over my shoulder.

There were quite a few cars parked at the trail head so it wasn’t like we were on a solitary hike, but as we were getting a late start by desert standards most people that passed us were heading back. The light was perfect so we didn’t get very far along the trail before I was snapping pictures. The desert is a living painting right now with all the cactus in bloom and the wildflowers and you all know how I feel about flowers. There were plenty of rocks too, only one made it into my pocket, but the flowers were the stars of the day.

First it was the yellow flowered shrubs everywhere and then we started seeing the Ocotillos with their bright red-orange flowers on the ends of their lush green sturdy thorn covered branches. We ran across some really enormous Ocotillos and Larry took my picture under one of the largest we found. Then I took lots of pictures of its flowers. That orange red against the blue, blue sky makes for a very energetic pic and I was graced by the presence of a hummingbird. I managed to get this one picture that was clear in spite of it being in the shadow of the plant.

Soon after we started seeing the bright pink flowers of the prickly pear cactus scattered everywhere, we saw a few Saguaros and many different flowers that I couldn’t begin to identify, but I have their pics!

For some reason I have a knack for spotting reptiles. I had stopped to photograph some flowers and had turned to look back down the trail and as my eyes scanned across a very large deep brown rock I noticed this very large, fat lizard the same color as the rock sunning itself. It was about the ugliest lizard I had ever seen and used telephoto so I wouldn’t scare it off before I got its portrait. It didn’t make a move so I got a little closer and then it turned its head and put its good eye on me, but other than that it didn’t leave, so I got a few more pictures of it. Isn’t that tail ghastly? It reminds me of the way an earthworm looks.

Tomorrow, part 2. Today was another lovely day in the mid seventies, no wind and as I was able to move still thanks to Ibuprofen, we took a couple of laps to get our muscles loosened up. My calves were and are still really, really tight and other than some tender toes and a few tight hip muscles I fared better than I had expected. All that darned exercise pays off and that really ticks me off!

Then we went over for coffee and I carted Ruby (my laptop) over to share my photos of our hike with our friends.

After coffee we hauled the laundry up to the laundry room, which was absolutely empty….shocking. We filled our water bottles and we went through the returned books basket in the “library” and shelved the books…something to do while we were waiting to put the wash in the dryers. As before when we went to get the laundry out of the dryers, the place was packed…glad we were done.

The rest of the day I spent procrastinating over getting the pictures picked out for the blog, editing and writing. And so here I am getting it done finally. When I came up with the plan for three parts it made it easier to get done.