For high adventure in 2016, the Teachers and Priests went hiking on the Lost Coast Trail in northern California. They call it the Lost Coast trail because the highway had to go east due to the rugged terrain so the only way to get to the coast in this area is to hike.
We drove up on Monday. We made good time until we got within 20 miles or so and then we drove on horrible dirt roads with lots of ruts and pebbles. The other vehicles were big trucks but I was driving our Santa Fe so I tried to go slow when I could so we wouldn't damage the car.
Monday night, we stayed at a campground a few miles from the coast. We cooked hamburgers over the fire and had brownie surprise in the dutch oven. We also got to play a little basketball since they had a hoop at the campground. We got up the next morning, had some breakfast and drove to the coast. It was chilly and windy there and we wondered what we had gotten ourselves into.
After hiking for a while in the sand (which is really, really hard), we saw these sea lions sunning themselves on the beach.
We camped right on the beach that night. Conner and I both saw a rattlesnake slither through the camp and were on high alert the rest of the night. Fortunately, we had our super small tent to sleep in so at least we were safe. The winds blew hard that night and caused issues for some of the tents but ours is so small it wasn't really affected.
Here we are right on the beach. It was pretty amazing to be right there and hear the waves all night long. We saw an eel the next morning which was pretty cool.
An amazing sunset.
We hiked several miles again the next day. By the end of the day, my watch said we had taken over 33,000 steps!
We saw lots of wildlife throughout the week, including some deer.
When we weren't hiking on sand, we hiked on loose rocks, which were about as bad.
Here we are -- just a slight chill in the air.
Again, the sunsets were amazing!
More wildlife.
This was one of the more challenging parts of the hike when we had to slowly climb down some rocks with our packs on.
On Thursday night, we got to where we planned to camp and there were really no campsites big enough for us. Since it was only another mile an a half, we took a vote and it was close but they decided to hike out the rest of the way and head for home. Right at the end of our hike, we noticed a horrible smell and then came upon this whale that was decaying on the beach.
We drove to pizza, which took a really long time to cook but was worth it. After that, we drove all the way home and made it there close to midnight but at least we got a great night's sleep!
This trip was lots of hard hiking, amazing scenery, and wildlife everywhere. The Lost Coast has been found!
No comments:
Post a Comment