We had originally thought of doing something in the Sierras this weekend, but, since our nephew, Jake, had a mountain bike race near Lake Isabella on Sunday and we didn’t want to drive the Kern River Canyon twice in two days, we decided to hike in Wind Wolves Preserve again. Two weeks ago, we had discussed going all the way to a reflection pond deep in the preserve, some 4-5 miles in, but ended up just walking about half as far to The Willows picnic area prior to turning around. Chris’ cousin, Cynthia, was able to join us for this hike, and we thought we’d give the reflection pond a try – we had a commitment to babysit the grandsons at 1:30pm, so we intended to get an early start. So much for that, since we didn’t arrive at the trailhead until 9am, an hour after the preserve opened. We hit the trail immediately, sticking to the most direct route on the east side of San Emigdio Creek – the walking was easy and often shady under the tall cliffs to the east, yet the trail became more faint and overgrown within the first half mile, making us uncertain that we had taken the right path. We decided to backtrack a short distance to the San Emigdio Creek trail, and this track led us southward along the creek, although obviously further west than the Canyon View trail we had expected to follow. Our path along the creek eventually became the same trail we had joined two weeks ago, and we followed it south again toward The Willows about two miles away. The Willows is surrounded by a loop trail, and having walked through the marshy area to the east the last time, we tried to find an alternate path that would be drier. For the second time in an hour, we guessed wrong – passing a sign for Bobcat Loop, we headed directly south for a few hundred yards before making a gradual but complete change of direction back north, discovering that Bobcat Loop is a loop within the main loop around The Willows. Now having completed the inner circuit, we chose to head west around the picnic area to the main road, then south along the road and east on the other side of the loop to pick up the main trail southward again – this was mistake #3, since it wound up being clearly the longer and least direct way. In any event, we made our way round and picked up the trail again, our path up the east canyon wall now visible ahead. Whereas The Willows and points north were still quite green and lush in places, the terrain here was very dry and barren –  the plain seemed to stretch away for miles to the south until broken abruptly by the mountains. As we approached the pond trail junction, we could see a large patch of poppies along the trail about halfway up the canyon wall – this become our goal as the grade steepened considerably. We were thankful to have reached this point while the day was still cool – it would be genuinely unpleasant to make this climb late on a summer afternoon. Near the top, we encountered a group of about 15 geology students from Cal State Bakersfield, some of whom knew our son-in-law, Pedro, on a field trip. Passing them, we gained the top of the canyon wall and found our destination, Reflection Pond, straight ahead perhaps a quarter mile distant – what had been elation turned to deep disappointment as the pond was bone dry. After a few minutes, we decided that our time window was running short since it was already 11am and we had about 4-1/2 miles to get back to the car, so we turned around wihtout much fanfare and began our descent. Upon reaching the canyon floor, we missed the junction with the main trail and had to backtrack about 1/4 mile to find it again – navigational error #4. At The Willows once again, we stopped at the same picnic table we had rested at two weeks ago before quickly passing through the marshy area we had avoided on our way up. We figured just by staying right at any and all junctions from here on, we’d be sure to use the most direct route back to the car – wrong again, since somehow we wound up back on the creek trail instead (#5 for those counting). Lesson: bring a hard copy of the map, and study it carefully beforehand. We made it out by about 12:45pm and were home in plenty of time to babysit as planned. Our total distance was a hair under 9 miles, but close to a mile of that was us wandering about like the Israelites in the desert. We’ll try this again in the very early spring when the flowers are more plentiful and the pond is full.