anyway, i planned this trip for jamie's birthday - the plan was to drop off elliot and then drive to palm springs and take the aerial tramway up to 8,000 feet where the temperature went from 120 something to 70 something. perfect. then we were going to hike down the other side of the mountain to the little town of idyllwild, hang out and do WHATEVER WE WANTED on sunday and hike back monday morning. this plan all went well for awhile.
here are pictures leaving the desert floor behind and looking up at the mountains that are rapidly approaching.
you have to get a state park and national forest permit in order to hike anywhere in the san jacinto range because most of the trails pass back and forth on state and federal land. from the top of the tramway to the forest service office it was about .5 miles, only 10.5 miles to go.
it really was beautiful and very serene. gorgeous vistas, nice cool weather, no screaming baby who hates the baby backpack. yes, very nice. see, jamie is happy!
so we finish the long hike down the mountain to the humber park trailhead which is still a good 2 miles from the town of idyllwild. and we start walking down the road. jamie wants to hitch hike the rest of the way and i do not so we walk. and walk. and walk. and it gets dark and we are still walking. we finally make it to our hotel, exhausted. we head out for a quick dinner and then literally crash until 10 am the next morning. our plan had originally been to do whatever we wanted to do all day the next day. all of things you can't do with a baby, see a movie, eat at restaurants while remaining in your seat for the duration of the meal, etc...
after we finally got our aching bodies together enough to go out and get breakfast we started calculating how long it would take us to hike back up the mountain the next morning based on our hike the day before and as our start time got earlier and earlier we decided to change our plans. instead of our relaxing day in town we decided to hike all of the way back to the tramway. except that we didn't want to walk back up the road to humber park and the devil's slide trailhead (and in fact couldn't hike that trail anyway because permits are limited from the idyllwild side of the trail during summer weekends... who knew?) so we decided to take the longer deer springs trail, you know, 12 plus miles from start to finish. see some new scenery..
we thought we knew where the trail started and began walking up the road. although idyllwild is still in the mountains, it is at 6000 ft which means that the middle of the day is HOT. when we got our permits for the hike back the ranger told us to double whatever water we were already carrying. so we walked up the road about .5 mi and decided we must be going the wrong way so we walked all of the way back in to town only to discover we had been going the right way after all. 45 minutes wasted and we hadn't even started for the day! this time i let jamie hitch us a ride back to the trailhead. the trail was hot and it was ALL uphill but we made it. even had more excellent views.
funny enough you have to hike up and then back down. the trail starts at about 6000 ft and ends at about 8000 ft but the trail had us hiking up to almost 10000 ft. before descending to the tramway. by the time we were done it was once again dark and we were exhausted. but we had booked another night in idyllwild! so we grabbed another quick dinner and our car and headed back to the town for the night.
here we are at the top of the tramway before we started hiking to idyllwild, don't we look so refreshed and excited to get started?
after we finally got our aching bodies together enough to go out and get breakfast we started calculating how long it would take us to hike back up the mountain the next morning based on our hike the day before and as our start time got earlier and earlier we decided to change our plans. instead of our relaxing day in town we decided to hike all of the way back to the tramway. except that we didn't want to walk back up the road to humber park and the devil's slide trailhead (and in fact couldn't hike that trail anyway because permits are limited from the idyllwild side of the trail during summer weekends... who knew?) so we decided to take the longer deer springs trail, you know, 12 plus miles from start to finish. see some new scenery..
we thought we knew where the trail started and began walking up the road. although idyllwild is still in the mountains, it is at 6000 ft which means that the middle of the day is HOT. when we got our permits for the hike back the ranger told us to double whatever water we were already carrying. so we walked up the road about .5 mi and decided we must be going the wrong way so we walked all of the way back in to town only to discover we had been going the right way after all. 45 minutes wasted and we hadn't even started for the day! this time i let jamie hitch us a ride back to the trailhead. the trail was hot and it was ALL uphill but we made it. even had more excellent views.
we really appreciated having a whole weekend sans baby but i think next time we might take a more restful approach to the weekend rather than cramming 22 plus miles into two days... still it was 22 baby free miles and being that elliot absolutely hates hiking, that made us happy.
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