HIKING!!!

we finally got to go on the hike i have been itching to go on! holy shit! awesome... where do i start... we drive down to the point(which is just below my property.) and head down to the creek. (it would be considered a river by some in this state.) its a beautiful day where we are and no bugs! everywhere else on the coast is socked in fog, but we are so high up in the mountains that its above all that, anyway... we are on a mission.
the trail down to the creek is nice until the bottom where the dirt isn't as stable. but it only takes a few short minutes to get there. there are trees down everywhere! looks like the wind has been ripping through there for years, but today barely a wisp. we clamber over rocks big and small to head down stream... there are waterfalls thirty feet tall that plunge into swimming holes large enough for ten people to splash around in and moss covered boulders as big as trucks everywhere.. its nice to feel the spray form the water pounding against the bottom of these falls...
we adventure down further and big sur princess looks across the creek and says, "hey look over there! doest that look man made?"
"naw, looks like a bunch of dead fall.."
"no , look there... see, lets go over there."
"ya, I'm in, lets do it."
so we cross the creek for the millionth time and pop up into this old growth red wood stump that has been converted into a storage area and "drying room". its huge, when i say stump that doesn't really do it for ya. it over fifteen feet across inside, its well over head high with "chambers" in it. a small cache of old tools and tarps in one corner.. we hike up and out of that onto two flattened campsites and a well used fire pit in between. some asshole even decided to carve their initials into the tree and the year that they lived there...
"05' N.O.and P.P."
there wasn't much trash immediately but i knew right away what this was... (anybody seen the movie Homegrown? no? rent it and you will get the feeling of where we where this weekend...)
"lets hike around and go up here."
"look here is some black pipe... lets follow it."
now, rooting around in an abandoned "site" really isn't the smartest thing to do but it looked like no one had been back in a while.... we found what we were looking for right away, hundreds of feet of pipe, old buckets, fertilizers MPs, everything.. timers, garbage, propane tanks, you name it, it was up there...
mind you, we are seven miles from the nearest public road and several miles up a road with locked gates... this was a huge operation... covering an entire hillside. id bet thousands plants or so...
ooppss...
we separate and start a small version of Marco polo, whistling and calling for each other through the dense brush... once we meet up in this small network of tunnels through the manzanita brush, we hear some semi-automatic gun fire... sounds close but gunshots travel far... and then again we hear it... and again..
now normally i don't sweat it.. my neighbor has a bunker and shoots guns all the time.. but now I'm a little nervous...
"lets go!"
"do you think that's for us?"
"i dunno, but we are out of here..."
we casually charge down a draw and keep finding more and more debris. make our way to the creek and towards home.. we stop and marvel at how beautiful the whole scene is and drink a couple of beers.. a red bull, and i watch as this incredible big sur girl throws off her clothes and jumps into the creek. "holy shit that's cold!" she says as she levitates out of the water.

"wow, that's amazing, i have never been the guy to jump into the near freezing water like that."

"no?"

"no, usually its the guys i hung out with who were into it."

"hahahaha, they just wanted to see each other naked...."

we laugh and head back up the water falls. stop and look at some very recent foot prints in the sand in the middle of the creek.

"did you walk in the creek?"

"no, that's strange."

someone had shorty before us walked in the middle of the creek, we assumed they were trying to hide their footprints. that was kind of eerie, when you think you are completely alone in the forest and all of a sudden you realize that there might be someone else with you there, its an odd feeling.

other than that hike we had a great weekend, we made some garden beds and more flower boxes. i found a small snake that the girls just let slither all over their hands, we had a small bar-b-que and had a buddie over who brought his infant child. um... yeah it was mellow and nice. hope everyone else had a great weekend!