Thanksgiving Day hike (19)

We spent the morning with our friend Lynn exploring a new section of a local regional park, Palo Corona. The hike began off Carmel Valley Road, then wound up to higher ground. A few miles on, we reached Anima Pond (which was occupied by a dabbling wood duck, very exciting!) and a locked gate—to which we had the combination, because Lynn had a permit! (They are trying to keep track of how many users there are during the first six months or so of this section being open, hence the permit.) Once through, we headed downhill—down down down. Trying to ignore the fact that eventually we'd have to go up up up...

One goal for the morning was to find a newly published geocache. The description said it wasn't far from the trail, and yet when we got close, our map pointed us about 300 feet away, straight downhill and next to a creek. Hmmm... Thinking the coordinates might simply be way (way!) off, we vaguely looked "under rocks," per the hint, but soon gave up and got back to enjoying our surroundings. When we reached a junction, we found a good spot to place a cache of our own, in the roots of an oak tree, earning us a geocaching "souvenir." Great! And then Lynn turned right. Wait, there's another trail down here? It wasn't on our geocaching map! 

But of course there was. The new section of the park is named after the San Jose Creek Trail, which... goes along the creek. We had another crack at that cache! The creekside walk was just lovely, and yes, we did find the cache, after a bit of searching (the hinted-at rock was smaller than we envisioned)—and were first-to-find to boot! Huzzah!

On our way out, we trudged up a hill to Whisler Point, for the view, which was splendid. We also planted another cache up there. Now there are three reasons for local geocachers to come visit this section. It's worth it. Even with all the trudging uphill and down. We reckon we walked about 9 miles in all.

Along the way we spotted some red-shafted flickers and a soaring redtail hawk, and back at the car several western bluebirds greeted us and wished us a happy Thanksgiving. And we had a nice long conversation with a ranger, Jeff Niewenhuis. 

Here are a few photos I took (I did not take the picture of the beautiful wood duck above):

Lynn dialing in the combination

Redwoods and sturdy bridges

Dark, but you get an idea of the creekside trail

View of Carmel Bay from Whisler Point

Back in the front range, looking toward the sea

Cottonwoods in their golden glory