Julian

Hello blog friends...
We wrapped up another exciting weekend of hikes. On Friday, Kerry was called into work (boooo), so Tracy and Cheryl hit up Iron Mtn in Poway. It was a fast hike, around 6 miles that we finished in less than 2 hours and burned just under 1000 calories. It was our first non-sunny day...a little cool with a light mist. At the peak we could see as far as the picnic table, which was about 20 feet away. Still made for a lovely short day hike.

Saturday was a rest day, more because we all had plans than needed the rest. On Sunday we headed out Cuyamaca Peak in Julian, about 45 minutes east of San Diego. Julian was hit hard by the wild fires of 2007, which will be apparent to you in our hiking pictures.

The most fascinating point was, had the trees not been burned down, we would have been hiking thru a thick forest, instead of a wide-open mountain side. But, the trees turn an amazing white color when the black peels away, and all along the trail we saw new life sprouting up.

This hike also challanged our mastery of mapping skills. Warning: Crossroads on a map, versus crossroads in real life do not look the same :) But, our directionally impaired group actually made the hike even better by getting our workout in on the fire road and then enjoying the scenary down the Conejos (and other) trails.
At the mountain's summit we encountered Rita, Ricardo the rattlesnake's larger, non-confrontational cousin. We assume Rita is a female snake because she calmly slithered away without bothering to shake her little rattles at us. Tracy stumbled upon Rita this time around...more interesting than the snake was learning that, when frightened, Tracy barks like a little dog! It is definitely something to hear:)

All in all, it was a great long hike, with plenty of laughs and fabulous scenary along the way. We hiked around 10.3 miles in 4 hrs 20 minutes and burned 2250 calories. It was also our highest summit to date, elevation 6,512 feet - still 7,993 feet less than Whitney! Check out our photos on the homepage :)
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In other news, our photo album is already full. So we will be uploading all older photos to a shared shutterfly account and will attach the link to the homepage. We'll keep posting the newest photos, but if you want to go back and take another look, the older photos will still be available.

Till next time!