Garland hike (28)

Yesterday Milo wanted to head to Garland Ranch Regional Park for our afternoon walk, and who were we to say no? Instead of one of our usual couple of hikes in that large park, we switched things up and headed up the steep Veeder Trail. The pond at the top was just a little puddle: the rain we've (blessedly) gotten lately is still soaking into the ground. But here's a picture of the pond from an April a number of years ago:

Hopefully it'll look like that again in a few months, if not sooner. (The doggy joy is courtesy of Doc and Milo. They are not *supposed* to get in the pond...)

We looked for a few geocaches that we'd found in the past, but David hadn't logged them under his new geocaching persona of FifiBonacci. We/he found three, didn't find one. None of them had been discovered in years—since April 2018 in a couple of cases. It's always a pleasure to find a lonely cache!

I took a few photos:

Looking north across Monterey Bay

Looking the other way on the trail

A little farther on: there's the Bay again

Our friend Charlie Clark's memorial bench

That's the bench in the background

Having just found Ruby's Water Hole

I may belly-ache about the political state of this wretched country and think (often) about moving—to France, Portugal, New Zealand—but truth be told, we do live in a bit of paradise. So many wonderful places to go walking, to get views of the surrounding land, to be reminded of the essential processes of life. And good restaurants, and culture, and friends. And in three years, we will own our house outright. Today reminded me yet again how much I value good wildness, too, and how easy it is to access here. A twenty-minute drive! We saw four people (one a ranger on an ATV) and one dog on our two-hour hike. Being able to get away is so valuable.