This looked like a fairly straightforward hike just off the coast. 1.5 terrain. Yeah, right.
We weren't sure where to park, so we went up to the resort. Then we weren't quite sure how to get over to the other side of the creek, so we followed some other hikers down the road. I don't know where they went, but soon we found ourselves back at Highway 1, missing the bridge we saw on the map at the resort.
We walked up the road from there and later found the trail and saw where people were crossing the bridge. A snake crossed Anne's path and that freaked her out for the rest of the hike.
A while later we came to a fork in the trail. It wasn't clear which way we had to go, so we took a right. Or should I say a 'wrong'. I think we followed that a half mile before it became clear that it wasn't leading us where we wanted to go. We made a u-ey and took the other fork.
Once we got 'close' to the cache it wasn't obvious where we had to go off the trail, so I did some bushwhacking only to find myself crossing 'another' trail. After (hopefully) dodging some poison oak, I found the cache and signed the log.
I moment of hilarity occured where Anne was calling my name into the bushes while I was standing 100 feet in front of her in clear view on the trail.
Anne managed to make it to the 'other' trail by staying on a trail, though I wasn't sure which one, so we continued dow n that trail to where I assumed it would meet up with the one we came up on. This was my plan, despite the fact that I didn't remember seeing another trail on the way up.
Not too much later, I realized we weren't getting close to the track of the other trail, so I suggested that we go off the trail down to the first one. This was the point at which my lovely wife clearly communicated to me for the second time that this was not a different trail, it was the same one we came up on. OK, then. We turned around and headed back down rather uneventfully, finding the bridge and eventually our car. We took a few minutes to check out the foofy camping area.
On the way home, I found some unwanted hitchikers of the tick variety. I don't think I got bit, but it's always freaky to find them later.
Thanks for the unintentional adventure!
Posted by jeff at June 19, 2004 04:35 PM