Hiking

I'm posting this here because it's not about the health benefits that I strive for with my hiking, but is just about how much I enjoy the beauty of the trails and views and blah blah blah. Today I went on a new trail about 20 minutes from our house. 3.1 miles up and 3.1 miles back. A little under 1200 foot elevation gain. This is pretty much the sweet spot for me as far as difficulty goes, so I was super excited to check it out. And the views did not disappoint. San Francisco and Oakland skylines as well as the Richmond bridge. Hopefully the picture is high enough resolution that you can see them off in the distance. (san francisco is pretty much in the dead center of the picture)

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And after I got home and was posting a review on All Trails, the website/app that I use to find trails, and not get lost on the trails when I'm out hiking, I found a review by this guy. Apparently he wears a gopro on his head when he goes hiking or something. If you want to see a 6x version of the exact hike I did today follow the link. (obviously he did this before all the rain we have received so it looks a little different now.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEhO5YDWwrw

That is so beautiful, JP. You are fortunate to have access to such a great spot and the ability to enjoy it!

That is a gorgeous view! Cool video! It's funny to see greenery. Here's a picture of my latest hike on a local trail. It's called Story Walk, sponsored in part by the local library, so you can hike and every few yards or so read a page of Owl Moon. Here's a picture of DH reading one of the pages.

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Cool thread--I'd like to see pictures of other recent hikes!

Wonderful hikes, jp1 and catherine. Love the idea of hiking and reading at the same time.

jp1-I watched the video and it's such a beautiful trail! I can see why you hike for the beauty.

The video view was so fast on a bike or motorbike? Hiking lets one savour the view as one progresses.

I think he says he just speeds the videos up to 6x normal speed with editing software. Which sounds right. It took me a little over an hour each way.

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Originally Posted by catherine

That is a gorgeous view! Cool video! It's funny to see greenery. Here's a picture of my latest hike on a local trail. It's called Story Walk, sponsored in part by the local library, so you can hike and every few yards or so read a page of Owl Moon. Here's a picture of DH reading one of the pages.

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Cool thread--I'd like to see pictures of other recent hikes!

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That sounds fun. I like hearing about things like this. The other day I read a diary on dailykos about some sort of geolocation game where you get instructions and have to then go find a hidden thing and then follow the clues for the next one, like a treasure hunt. That also seemed like a great way for people to motivate to get outside and move.

This is Phoenix reservoir, one of our drinking water storage reservoirs. The pic is from a hike last summer before all the rains. Went back there on Friday and thankfully it's completely full now.

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How about...

Kent Walks.

This walk is on Blue Bell Hill. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViFLs2QEAQY

A site along the walk is the White Horse Stone (the white horse rampant being the emblem of County Kent).

According to legend, in the Fifth Century Vortigern, "King of the Britons", was overserved ale by the Anglo-Saxon/Jute leader Hengist, father of Rowena. And Vortigern's desire for Rowena was so great, he gave Kent to Hengist in exchange for her.

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Originally Posted by jp1

That sounds fun. I like hearing about things like this. The other day I read a diary on dailykos about some sort of geolocation game where you get instructions and have to then go find a hidden thing and then follow the clues for the next one, like a treasure hunt. That also seemed like a great way for people to motivate to get outside and move.

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It's geocaching. There is also something sorta similar called letterboxing. Easy to Google and find out more. I've done both in my area as well as letterboxing on a couple of vacations years ago. Don't know how popular either one is these days.

Such a pretty view in your first post JP

A couple of pics from last Sunday's hike. The trailhead is next to a cow pasture but just ten minutes in are the "big trees" that the trail is named after. Thankfully they are not laying down on their side. That's just a benefit from the forum software...

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I do not have such dramatic vistas to share, but this is the river right near my house, and I start my local walks with a look from the bridge to see if there is any interesting wildlife about.
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Loving all these beautiful pictures! Thanks for sharing.

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Originally Posted by happystuff

It's geocaching. There is also something sorta similar called letterboxing. Easy to Google and find out more. I've done both in my area as well as letterboxing on a couple of vacations years ago. Don't know how popular either one is these days.

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My grandson and I do geocaching. Free app. Only cost is gas if you leave your walking vicinity. It's a great way to get him away from his screens. He gets pretty jazzed as we close in on the caches. Most we find; some we can't.

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Originally Posted by rosarugosa

I do not have such dramatic vistas to share, but this is the river right near my house, and I start my local walks with a look from the bridge to see if there is any interesting wildlife about.
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It may not be that dramatic but it still looks quite nice.

Not all of my hikes have dramatic vistas either. One of my favorites is next to the local general aviation airport so there are always little tiny airplanes flying over and it is within sound of the big racetrack that's maybe 5 miles away. On race weekends it's not terribly peaceful so I look online at the racetrack schedule before heading there.

But it is also next to a major wetlands area that had been drained to make farmland until about 20 years ago when they started restoring it to a very biodiverse wetland. The picture doesn't do justice to how big the area is. The idea that an area hundreds of square miles had been drained of water to make farmland is remarkable to me. Although perhaps it is more remarkable that somehow we managed to turn it back into what it used to be.

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Today's hike featured a nice view of San Pablo Bay (just north of San Francisco Bay). The tall mountain way off in the distance is Mount Diablo, about 40 miles east southeast. It's the tallest peak in the bay area. 4.8 mile hike with 987 feet of elevation gain. My legs are definitely feeling it this evening.

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Beautiful view, JP!

Beautiful pictures!

jp, that's a great story about the wetlands!

Love the pictures. Glad you are enjoying your hikes!

Wow thank you for sharing! I love seeing different views of where people call home and enjoying their area.

We didn't hike to get to this but it's so awesome I figured I would share anyway. SO's mother and sister are visiting and we spent the weekend up in Sonoma, north of the city. (mother is 89 and has heart issues so walking long distances just isn't a good plan. And sister's idea of a long walk was to leave the hotel and walk to the far end of the strip mall next door to the hotel...)

Yesterday we went to Armstrong Woods, a beautiful place with many redwood trees. The oldest/biggest is the Colonel Armstrong. It's 308 feet tall and roughly 1400 years old. It's normal that the lower part has no branches. As the trees get taller the branches higher up block the sunlight so the lower down branches die off and you end up with a forest canopy that supports the entire trees. It's kind of mind boggling to me to think that this tree started its life sometime around the year 600 AD.

And even more important, I've figured out how the forum software wants people to deal with the direction of photographs. You just have to upload the photo, figure out what undesired direction it is facing, use the photo editor on your computer to rotate it to what would be "right", save that as a new file, and then use your computer's photo editor again to re-rotate the new back the same amount. Start a new post and upload this third file and it will be facing the right direction! Simple living at it's best!

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Great picture, JP, but the whole photo thing doesn't sound very simple to me! I just upload pics from my desktop and they are always the correct orientation. Do you think it's something to do with me not having an iPhone?

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Originally Posted by rosarugosa

Great picture, JP, but the whole photo thing doesn't sound very simple to me! I just upload pics from my desktop and they are always the correct orientation. Do you think it's something to do with me not having an iPhone?

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It’s probably more to do with the forum software engineers not having an iPhone. Because if they did they surely would not consider this to be such an awesome feature.

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Originally Posted by jp1

We didn't hike to get to this but it's so awesome I figured I would share anyway. SO's mother and sister are visiting and we spent the weekend up in Sonoma, north of the city. (mother is 89 and has heart issues so walking long distances just isn't a good plan. And sister's idea of a long walk was to leave the hotel and walk to the far end of the strip mall next door to the hotel...)

Yesterday we went to Armstrong Woods, a beautiful place with many redwood trees. The oldest/biggest is the Colonel Armstrong. It's 308 feet tall and roughly 1400 years old. It's normal that the lower part has no branches. As the trees get taller the branches higher up block the sunlight so the lower down branches die off and you end up with a forest canopy that supports the entire trees. It's kind of mind boggling to me to think that this tree started its life sometime around the year 600 AD.

And even more important, I've figured out how the forum software wants people to deal with the direction of photographs. You just have to upload the photo, figure out what undesired direction it is facing, use the photo editor on your computer to rotate it to what would be "right", save that as a new file, and then use your computer's photo editor again to re-rotate the new back the same amount. Start a new post and upload this third file and it will be facing the right direction! Simple living at it's best!

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Thank you for sharing this.. my latest area of interest is in old-growth forests and the need to protect them, so thank you for sharing the history of that tree! I just recently learned more about Julia Butterfly Hill, the woman who sat in the tree Luna for over two years to protect it from loggers. I had heard of her, but never knew the story. What a great story!! She is such a cool person. There are videos on YouTube where she describes her journey.

If you are interested, take a look at Part 1 of the YouTube video and then the sidebar should have Parts 2,3, and 4. Each one is only 10-15 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyLiOnmBZLw

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Originally Posted by jp1

It’s probably more to do with the forum software engineers not having an iPhone. Because if they did they surely would not consider this to be such an awesome feature.

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The vBulletin software engineers abandoned this version of the software some years ago in favor of a completely revamped version. I'm sure that the latest iteration does recognize the 'up' tag modern smartphones and tablets embed in photographs, unfortunately this version does not. As I've mentioned before, if you take a pic in your devices default portrait orientation, it will show up here that way as well.

It appears that modern smartphone's photos app and modern social media software does the orientation work for you, recognizing the embedded orientation tag and automatically rotates photos displayed. We could do that here too if we purchased the newest version of the software, converted our database to accomodate the newer versions requirements and then upgraded the server side software. On the other hand, we could also just take our photos right side up. ;)

I usually export the photo to my desktop, where it lands in the right direction, and then I just upload that version rather than the one from photos library.

Great picture and info, JP. Thanks for sharing. I would like to see redwoods someday.

I’m pretty sure I wasn’t holding my phone sideways when I took that picture. Tall trees require portrait mode. But now that I’ve cracked the code for how to have perfectly oriented pictures every time it’s all good.

I figured there were good reasons for not upgrading the forum software, assuming that there was a newer version of the software that simplified this. It doesn’t seem worth the cost/headache of a major upgrade just so that no one has to tilt their heads to look at the occasional picture.

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Originally Posted by jp1

I figured there were good reasons for not upgrading the forum software, assuming that there was a newer version of the software that simplified this. It doesn’t seem worth the cost/headache of a major upgrade just so that no one has to tilt their heads to look at the occasional picture.

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:+1:

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Originally Posted by jp1

I’m pretty sure I wasn’t holding my phone sideways when I took that picture.

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See my test using photos taken just now from my iPhone. Test (simplelivingforum.net)

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Originally Posted by catherine

I usually export the photo to my desktop, where it lands in the right direction, and then I just upload that version rather than the one from photos library.

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I do the same.

I LOVE hiking. We were camping at Algonquin Park Provincial park last year and had a chance to hike the best trails I ever hiked. Couple of scenic lookouts were just breathtaking. Hardwood lookout trail, Hemlock bluff and I forgot the name of the other trail that took me straight up for nearly 2.5 km. Hardest trail to hike, I had to make several stopovers, but the view compensated for the hard work.

FishFinder, thanks for the bump on this thread. I'd wanted to add to it but with being busy getting back to work after vacation I'd completely forgot. Last week while we were in palm springs I went on a couple of hikes. One was nice enough, and I got a nice panorama photo of the whole city with the cancer windmills off in the distance. (admittedly the city doesn't have much of a skyline since I don't think there are many (any?) buildings that are more than 2 stories tall).* The second hike, though, came recommended by some volunteers doing maintenance on the first trail. They promised me that it was worth the $12 entrance fee to get on the Indian reservation. And they were right. A lot of the trails in the area are dry river beds. This was was alongside a wet river! So it had all sorts of trees and other vegetation all over the place.

*the forum software doesn't seem to like the panorama photo but since it was the least impressive I'll let that go. The other three from the next day's hike are the cool stuff...

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Very nice, jp!!

Last weekend I went back to a couple of trails that I hadn't been to since last summer. The panorama picture probably won't do the view justice. From that spot I could see Mount Diablo, the highest point in the east bay, downtown San Francisco, downtown Oakland, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, and the Richmond Bridge. (the trail is called 3 Bridges...)

The other trail doesn't have quite as impressive views but I was impressed with how tall the grass was. At some places it was taller than 5' 8". Last time I was there it was summer and everything was dried out and short.

The last picture is not from a hike. It's an open space about a half mile from our house owned by the county. They have apparently hired a bunch of natural lawn mowers this year to lower the fire risk, which seemed very cool. I will definitely let you all know if they bring the mowers over to deal with the open space hill behind our house after they are finished there.

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Love the goats! Thanks for sharing.

One of the great things about living where we do is that we can drive 45 minutes from here and be in a markedly different climate. It's 92 at our house right now and expected to be in the upper 90's/100's from tomorrow through thursday. But I was able to drive 45 minutes SW to go hiking this afternoon on a trail where the temperature was only 75 and plan to do the same thing tomorrow and monday.

And as a bonus I got views of the ocean, a forest recovering from a wildfire, and some sort of survey badge from 1930 in the ground at the peak of the mountain I was on. The second photo is of the fire damage just beyond the sign in the first photo. Before the fire the trees on the left would have carried through that whole area.
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Well this is interesting. That little badge introduced me to the history of a long-standing federal agency that I didn’t know anything about before. Apparently they are the people that make the gps on my phone functional so I don’t have to carry printed trail maps (or hope that their is adequate signage as was the case today)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._N...ey?wprov=sfti1

Great scenery JP, and what an excellent way to escape the heat.