Carr Reef

I was five minutes late for our 5:15am meetup.  Bill was already anxious.  Zeke came along.

We started our hike at 5:31am, charging up the road for four miles.  The road and parking lots were quiet.  We were the first ones in for the day.  The morning area was cool.  Zeke jumped around me with joy.

This is the standard hike the Sierra Vista Meetup does on Thursdays (it used to be Tuesdays), walking up the road for 2.2 miles to the middle falls.  Sunlight hadn't yet lighted up the flowers along the way.  Wild geraniums are blooming on the north slopes in the shade.

A dead coyote, not even a year old, lay decomposing and stinking at the 2.5-mile mark.  The forest service couldn't remove the carcass and give the animal some dignity?

We made it to the overlook in 1:35 hours.  That must be a record!  It's 4.6-miles one way. Winds were calm, too.  I sat and ate a chicken sandwich, gave Zeke a cup of water, and then we resumed our return walk.  Bill and I agreed that this 9.3-mile hike is the best training hike out there in our area.  Would we do this more often?  I would, if it weren't for the 5:15am morning start!  I'm getting exhausted from these early morning wake-ups.  We hiked for 3:10 hours, not including the ten minutes we were on the reef.  The burn area from Thursday is very obvious from this vantage point.

I was back home just before 9am.  What an accomplishment, to get so many miles in this early!  But now I was tired and lay on bed.  I napped for a half hour, watched another German movie, and at 5pm got ready for another hike with the dogs, this time a short full moon hike along the Clark Springs trail.  This is only 1.5 miles long r/t from the trailhead.   It was just long enough to give the dogs some roaming space away from any crowds.

That puts today's miles in at 10.9 miles.