Memorial Day Weekend

Saturday morning Jill and I and the pup drove up to Ventura, CA for 2 days and a one night stay for the weekend. When we got there it was raining, but by the time we had walked around Ventura Harbor the clouds broke and there was sun. We ate lunch at a nice little restaurant called the Cajun Kitchen Cafe where we shared some chicken gumbo, red beans and rice, corn bread, and a biscuit. We eventually checked into the luxurious Motel 6 before going out to dinner later that night at the Anacapa Brewing Co. We followed that up with going to see Indiana Jones at the downtown Cinema. Sunday morning we got up and went for a 3-4 mile run with our new Nike+ipods on the Ventura River Trail followed by Starbucks for breakfast. At the last minute we decided to drive up to Ojai for part of the day and managed to catch there farmer's market, but sadly no dog's were allowed. After walking around the art festival they had that day we went back to a little organic cafe inside of the local market and found stuff for lunch.








Sunday afternoon after eating lunch we drove home to beat the traffic and also to prepare for the 15 mile round trip hike that we were planning to do the next day to the top of one of the 9 San Grogronio Peaks. Oh by the way, Jill and I have decided to summit all 9 peaks of the San Grogronio Mountain Range before we leave S. Cal in 2 years. Our friends Trevor and Leah were up for it as well and so Monday morning at 8:30 we made our way up towards the mountains. We stopped at the Ranger Station to sign a hiking permit and then up to the Foresee Creek trailhead that lead to San Bernardino East Peak Summit. It started off cold and foggy but eventually with some altitude change we broke through the clouds. About 1:00 pm we stopped and ate lunch just off the trail, and then continued on. As we got towards 8,500- 9,000 ft. elevation we begin to walk over mounds of snow that covered the trail periodically. Once we reached 10,400 the trail was mostly gone and we had to rely on the GPS coordinates for the summit. But even more than the GPS we used the trees (thanks to Trevor for noticing) since someone had cut parts of the bark to mark where the trail continued on from tree to tree. At about 5:00-5:15 pm we summited San Bernardino East Peak at 10,691 ft., and what a view!
We took it all in as long as we could, but then the descent had to start sometime. Half way down we caught a beautiful sunset and then we made use of the headlamps we brought until we reached the truck at about 9:30 pm. (Oh the burn!)

What we've been up to...

We've been making dinners, we took advantage of the REI sale this month and bought sleeping bags (thank you uncle Sam and Jackson). About a week or so ago I pulled out my fly rod, got my license and headed up to the Santa Ana river and manage to pull some nice trout out of there. I caught about 9 trout total some brown some rainbow, but only about half of them were of any size for that river / creek. It was a good start to the season though. We decided to plant a garden this summer and since summer is almost here we did the quick planter box method of cement blocks with a layer of chicken wire underneath due to our resident gofers. Took a couple days of moving dirt but we finally finished it and put a nice layer of compost and Starbucks Pike Place coffee grounds on top. So far we have two Roma tomatoes plants, one Serrano Chile, and one crook neck squash, today is a cooler day so we'll have to take advantage and plant some more.