Great Day For A Hike

Still warm and windy here in SoCal. Hiker and I got out of bed around 7 am. Spent the early morning watching the news coverage of a large brush fire about 50 miles east of me in Glendora, CA. I headed out just before 10 am to get my lottery tickets, put gas in the car and stopped by Sam's Club to pick up a few items. Didn't take Hiker with me as it was too warm to leave her in a closed car while I shopped. On the way home from Sam's I had the radio on and “The Dance” by Garth Brooks came on. I had my brother Keith sing that at Ben's memorial service, so when I hear it, I get a little misty eyed. Left around noon with Hiker in tow to head for the Placerita Nature Center to meet up with my friend RuthAnne Murthy for a hike in the canyon. RuthAnne is taking the docent training at the center. She brought along another person Roxanne who is also training to be a docent. We did about a 3 ½ mile hike up to the white oil bubble pot and back. The weather was warm and nice, but there were a couple of spots where the wind was blowing really hard through the canyon. Coming back down the trail, there was a young couple with a Australian Cattle Dog. It was mostly black and white with more white on its face. Hiker had to go up and put her nose against the other Aussie's nose. It was cute. There was a group of college kids up in the canyon and one of them decided to take off by himself and leave the trail and hike up the side of the mountain. His friend was worried about him as the guy was saying he didn't know if he could get back down. We thought we were going to have to call the search and rescue volunteers, but I guess he was eventually able to get down on his own because they were not there when we came back down the trail. I'm still out of shape and when we got to the bubble pot, I was out of breath. On the way back down the canyon my feet started killing me. Bet I sleep good tonight (LOL).