Our First Hike With A Group...Well Sort Of

Linda emailed me that she had heard of a walking/hiking group that met every Friday morning over at William S. Hart Park. She wanted to check them out and go for the hike they were doing in the park. We heard there were 4 dirt trails in the canyons behind the park. I packed up Hiker and picked Linda up around 8:30 and we headed over there. The meet up was supposed to be at 9:00 but several people didn't show up until around 9:15 or later and then instead of starting right off on the hike, they did warm-up stretches which Linda and I never do. Hiker was raring to go and was getting impatient waiting for them to start the hike. We finally headed out for what is known as the Bison Road. We left the park and headed over to Market Street which is where the Senior Center is located. We walked through the Center's parking lot, through a gate and up a dirt trail that climbed up the hill. Linda, Hiker and I usually do more level trails so this one was a little hard on us. Linda was really getting winded so Hiker and I lagged back to stay with her while the rest of the group, which was about 10 or 12 people, sped up the hill. They were probably at least a quarter of a mile ahead of us the entire time, but every now and then they'd yell down to us from where the could see us from a higher level on the trail. Linda and I like to stop and take photographs and this group of people mainly go out for the hike, not to enjoy the scenery as Linda and I do. There were some really nice views from the trail of the Santa Clarita Valley. It was very cloudy while we were out on the trail but not really cold. By the time we got back to the park, we found 3 of the group members sitting at a picnic table waiting to make sure we got there safely. It was a 2 1/2 mile walk and took us just a little over an hour, so we did pretty good. When I got home, I ran a load of laundry, had lunch, watched my soap and then headed over to Food-4-Less to pick up some produce as I had completely ran out of salad fixings. By late afternoon, the wind had come up and had blown away all of the clouds. It was so pretty out that I took Hiker down to the local park for a few minutes. All in all it was a pretty good day.