Sunday, August 18, 2013

Pinnacles National Park

A couple of weeks ago, Chris and I randomly went hiking, just drove, found a park, and walked the hills.
So, last Sunday, we decided to try Pinnacles National Park and took the Moses Rim Trail, a trail of "moderate difficulty."
Peeps let me give you a warning: unless you're a super hiker with repelling equipment, you don't want to take any of the "strenuous" trails. Chris and I aren't necessarily experienced hikers and I'd like to think we're not out of shape, but the trails get steep and rocky.  Still, it's AWESOME. Beautiful views.
The Moses Rim Trail takes you through Bear Gulch caves. I was so excited about these! Being from Florida, I had never seen caves before--these weren't like the ones you see on wilderness specials, but they were pretty cool. The trail then takes you out onto the reservoir. From that point we could have turned around and taken the path back through the caves OR continue up the mountain and go back through the woods, coming out where you began.
We took the way up and around, mainly because I didn't want to walk down this teeny, tiny staircase. There were some spaces where the rock wall jutted out and you had to somehow avoid the wall while moving forward and not falling over the guardrail, which, several times, seemed far too short to save you from falling to . . . something . . . injury?
My fear of heights kept telling me "death death DEATH!!!"  but that probably wasn't a possibility . . . unless I broke my neck . . . which, I guess is always a possibility so . . . well . . . Bottom line: High places--I don't like them. At all. Nope. The handrail is my bff like totally for sure. Seriously. Handrail = awesome.
Meanwhile, Chris is strutting ahead, goading, "You know what's REALLY fun? Not holding onto the rail. You should try it. Come on, let go!"
"Chris, I will KILL you. KILL. YOU." 


 
 
The reservoir . . . and the Asian tourists we kept running into . . . there were quite a few tourists, which made going up and down that tiny staircase complicated. 
Some of the trees were covered in this red substance. Really awesome looking.

That teeny, tiny little pine tree made my heart glad.  Just so tall and proud and little. :]



If you ever choose to do Pinnacles, it's so worth the time and the heat.  Be sure to have a trail map because the trails do branch off.  Chris is all about "exploring" the hike, which is great, except that the last time he tried exploring on a hike, I ended up screaming the entire time because I was afraid we were going to get lost or eaten by alligators (at Lake Jessup, that's a REAL possibility since those suckers are twelve feet long).  This time around, Chris is trying to scale mountains, squeeze through cracks, and just run off in various directions while I'm begrudgingly trying to keep up, worried that, once again, there's a real possibility we could get lost, die, and no one would find the bodies.
Melodramatic? Me? Heavens no! Why do you ask?

In the end, the hike took us roughly three hours and four bottles of water (ALWAYS have water an sunscreen handy for these kinds of excursions).

When my mom comes to visit in a week and a half (YAY!!!) we are totally planning on taking her to Pinnacles. Can't wait!

6 comments:

  1. Wow, those stairs sure do look exciting! I'm not a terribly athletic person, but I do love hiking--when I was hiking in some parks in Malaysia recently, and standing on a little cliff overlooking the ocean, I was thinking--what kind of person would ever go to the gym to work out? I can understand wanting to be fit, but man, there are so much more exciting ways to do it than to be in a boring gym.

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  2. Wow, what an absolutely gorgeous hike! :-) Glad you didn't die. ;-)

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  3. Looks like a lot of fun! My husband keeps saying we need to go there, and he just saw me reading this and got super jealous! ;)

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  4. Haha I remember when I lived in Seattle ( I am form NY) for a summer and all my roommates were hard core hikers. When I stepped out of my room for my first hike wearing flared leggings and platform sneakers my room mates literally fell over laughing. And we literally hiked to the top of a mountain. A small one--what they call "hills" but rocky and high non the less. I was thinking grassy trails. But the view at the top was amazing. They wanted to impress their roommate from NY. They did.

    Ali of

    Dressing Ken

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  5. These are amazing pictures! I would LOVE to see it in person if ever I make it to Ca :) We had a similar experience at Hocking Hills (in Ohio of all places). I don't like heights either but I turned into some sort of madwoman that NEEDED to see every nook and cranny. It was just so awesome I could not help myself :)

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  6. that first picture. good golly that's gorgeous.

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