Days 125 & 126

Day 126b
Friday July 4th, evening

After catching our breath from the trek we headed back into town for the 4th o' July festivities. A quick shower, some V8 juice and I was good as new. I headed down to the 'Nard to a BBQ with a handful of other co-workers. We had a lazy evening sampling Cabo Wabo, chit-chatting and watching the fire works. later that night Hadler and I took a lazy stroll down around the canals of the new marina. It is pretty amazing down there, you have no idea you are in the heart of Oxnard! It reminded me a little of the east coast, like Cape May or even Hyannis a tad. It was very pleasant. We even saw hash marks from earlier in the day. I almost fell over laughing when I recognized one hash sign to be an old friend the crazy & infamous Rub Her Dinghy! Right around midnight we came across this party boat, built like a Mississippi river steamer trolling through the canals. We watched in amazement as this big boat tried to make it under a low bridge. The captain must have been drinking. The bridge & smoke stacks on the boat had to be 10 or 11 feet taller then the bridge clearance! The boat had to toss it into reverse full throttle to avoid collision. Funny though the dancing revelers didn't seem to notice.


"Capt'n, I need more powarhhhh!"



Day 126a
Friday July 4th, morning

We were up pretty early after an uneventful evening. Now when I say uneventful what I really mean is one more evening under the stars where no one got eaten. There was one time though where being eaten could quite possibly have been a reality. At about 1 or so in the AM we heard these blood-curdling screams that were kinda like half screams half growls. We looked at each other, our hair on the back of our necks standing at attention. Mountain lion we whispered soundlessly to each other. Casey reached for his axe, his other hand gripping the bear mace with white knuckles. We waited. We watched. We waited again, hearts pounding away. After a few seconds Casey thinks out loud, gotta be condors right? Right I say, condors gotta be, crisis averted back to chillaxing. Both of us int he back of our heads are thinking,. man no way that was a bird...! I slept with one eye opened and my sprinting shoes on.

The morning greeted us with soft sunshine and temps in the low 90s. That would not last. Within 20 minutes of waking, just after breakfast, the mercury hit 100.1. Oh joy! Scanning the landscape around us there was not a tree or soda fountain in site. Not wanting to waste much time but not exactly excited to be on our way, we packed up and set out into the hills. After a few hours, and a few hundred pints of perspiration we were back at the trail head. No problemo, easy breezy indeed.

Waking up to this vista is quite fulfilling.

Our two errant explorers

So you think you are good at math? Okay explain this to me; my stride equates to approximately 1800 steps per mile. If the Park Service says the trail is 7.9 miles, and the GPS says we are just shy of 5 miles away from the end, and yet we already walked 14,599 steps (or approximately 8.1 miles), where the crap are we??? That is some phunky arithmetic-- quantum, Boolean, Euclidean or otherwise.

Body by Budweiser, don't be jealous.

Day 125
Thursday July 3rd

With the arrival of the long-ish holiday weekend, it was time for another adventure. My buddy Casey has been telling me about this walk out to the Sespe Hot Springs. We are both big hot springs fans and I was definately into giving it a shot. He did a little research and got the GPS way points for the hot springs and a few trail descriptions of potential approaches. The spring are located in this little patch of wilderness tat can be accessed via Rose Valley to the west, Fillmore to the south, or Gorman to the northeast. After a little debating we decided to come in from Fillmore as it was the shortest distance, only about 7.9 miles. The day before we packed all our gear and took inventory of what to bring. Casey wanted to bring everything under the sun-- saw, hatchet, knife collection, tent, bear mace, silk pajamas, etc.! You could see the disappointment in his eyes when I put my foot down on bringing the kitchen sink...

A quick celebration shot to send us off in fine form & make the Buddha happy.

Once quitting time rolled around today we jetted out lickety split. Despite our best intentions we didn't get to the trail head until about half past 7. The sun was already dipping below the horizon as we saddled up. After more requisite dilly-dallying we finally beat feet at about quarter past 8. 7.9 miles in the dark, here we come. Actually we were both pretty excited not to be hiking in the heat of the day. The trail was a little over grown but didn't present too much of a challenge as we wound up and down, over and across the hilly terrain into the Sespe. Though dark, it was beautiful indeed. It was still pretty warm, especially in a few air pockets where the temps would spike dramatically. We could only imagine what it would be like the next morning hiking under the burning sun.

Casey = Vogue = Pose

After a few steep spots and a couple hours of grunting and grinding we came to a trail intersection in the pitch black. We checked our GPS and started down into the black valley below us. Within a few feet, the nice trail we had been following was swallowed in a tangle of weeds and undergrowth. After a few minutes we had lost the trail entirely. All we knew was that we were going down and that the trail somewhere was going down to. Every now and again we would pick up faint traces of a trail, though as to whether or not it was our trail we had no idea. We pushed down through the clinging foliage into where we had expected to find the stream. When we got to the bottom there was no stream, nope, nothing at all but dust clogging the bright white beams from our head lamps-- no water in sight anywhere.

We pushed on. We would lose the trail, circle around, back track, pick up something we could easily convince ourselves was a trail and move forward again. By this time we were starting to get cold, frustrated and tired. We bushwacked for about 90 minutes over about 2 miles which is a horrible pace. Finally we lost the trail for good in a large meadow. We could barely make out where the trail came into the meadow, finding where it exited was impossible in the pitch black night. In all honesty we knew we were going in the right direction but had no idea how far off course we were. We decided before we got too far further into the night to set up camp in a comfy spot and decide what comes next in the morn'.

You call this a trail sign? Where exactly are we suppose to go?

We first thought of camping on a little mound in the meadow. It was one of the only clear spots around and across the dried creek bed were two tall-ish trees we could hang our food sacks from to keep our breakfast away from the critters. We were slowly settling in when I noticed a bee on my foot, then another one next to my bag, and another on the ground a few inches away. Now not just any old honey bee, but a frikin blood-thirsty yellow jacket scheming to send me into anaphylactic shock while I slept. After a quick survey of the area we found that we were about to set up shop on top of a hornets nest-- and I don't mean that figuratively. We found a hole int he ground where the bees had burrowed out their hive and were coming and going all around us. Without really discussing the options we blazed right on outta there.

We back tracked up the dried stream bed until we came to another meadow. It looked good to both of us, ie. no more bees. Again setting up Casey saw some interesting scat and called me over. Sure enough, lion crap-- you could see pieces of bone and all sorts of hair in it. The closer we looked we slowly began t realize that this pile of crap was not the only one. There was cougar scat EVERYWHERE, piles upon piles upon piles! It looked like we stumbled into the town square of mountain lion-ville. Again we retreated, this time back up the canyon to the last trail intersection we found. We could not go fast enough. Our tired legs were motivated by the thoughts of hundreds of mountain lions eying us through the darkness, licking their chops and waiting. Every little tiny noise would make us hike just a little faster. Finally we hit the intersection and plopped down for the night. No bees, no lion crap, not too much bear crap, a few ants but whatever it would do for the night.

Haven't we seen this sign before?

Ahhhh, camp at last... (and when I say camp, I really mean whiskey)