Fun With Chris and Jane

One of the destinations that has been on our list for a while is the newly-designated Pinnacles National Park (formerly Pinnacles National Monument), located southeast of Salinas and a two-plus-hour (and not very pleasant) drive from Pismo Beach. There are a number of trails that criss-cross the park, but the highlight in just about everyone’s book is the High Peaks Trail, a mile of which weaves its way along the tallest ridge at the park’s center – this ridge is studded…

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We’ve been trying to increase the distances of our hikes, and especially in light of yesterday’s shortened walk up the Adobe Trail, we needed to do something comparatively long. We had first thought of an Oats Peak/Coon Creek loop in Montana de Oro when planning the Valencia Peak Excellent Adventure in 2011, and we had hiked to Oats Peak before some 15 months ago. From Oats Peak, a trail leads south into Coon Creek Canyon, picking up a trail there leading…

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About 30 minutes east of Santa Maria on Hwy 166 is the Adobe Trailhead, a sign we had driven past dozens of times on our way to and from Pismo Beach. We had seen hikers on the trail a couple of times, but information about the trail has proved elusive; however, Chris finally found some pictures on the Santa Lucia Sierra Club web site and trail stats at hikelospadres.com, so we put the hike on our to-do list. Our first…

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Our daughter and two grandsons joined us for the weekend in Pismo, so we decided to just do one hike this trip instead of our usual two. After contemplating doing Bishop Peak again and some other options, we settled on Johnson Ranch, a 200+ acre open space preserve located along Hwy 101 just south of San Luis Obispo. Being only 10 minutes from our trailer, it was certainly convenient, and at a planned distance of 3.7 miles, it was short…

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Back at Pismo Beach for the weekend, we wanted to get two hikes in. Rainy weather on Friday forced up to postpone our plans for that day, so our first excursion of the weekend was hiking up Hazard Peak in Montana de Oro State Park. In times past, a popular trail ran straight up the peak’s west ridgeline, but overuse has now prompted the park to reroute the trail another mile to the north – it is now three miles to…

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On the way out of the Gaviota Peak parking lot, we thought we should make a short detour to visit nearby Nojoqui Falls, an 80-foot waterfall that looked impressive enough to warrant the short 0.6 mile hike to see it. We found the trailhead easily enough, located a couple of miles east of Hwy 101 in Nojoqui County Park, a pretty setting on the north side of a tall ridge with sunny grass fields and shady oak groves. A small herd…

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Wow, what a day!  Gaviota Peak had been on our to-do list for some time, and we decided it was time to make the one-hour drive down from Pismo to take it on.  The peak itself is the westernmost summit of a long ridge towering over Hwy 101 along the coast west of Santa Barbara, and the highway itself leaves the coastline here to turn north toward Santa Maria.  Gaviota Peak thus overlooks a variety of terrain – the coastal…

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Expecting to hike Gaviota Peak near Santa Barbara tomorrow, we were looking for something a little longer than yesterday’s 2.8 miles but not something too strenuous – we settled on the Mariposa Trail in the Irish Hills south of San Luis Obispo, from which we could reach a summit called Morro View that would hopefully live up to its name. At about 3+ miles with 800 feet of elevation gain, it looked to be just the ticket, on paper at…

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While staying for President’s Day week in Pismo Beach, we decided to finally get some hiking in.  Jane got some new boots, so we decided to keep things simple and short the first time out so she could break them in.  South of the city of Los Osos is the Morro Dunes Ecological Reserve, a piece of the contiguous greenspace connecting Montana de Oro State Park with Morro Bay State Park.  Though the reserve is criss-crossed with trails, we opted…

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We had had to postpone our annual Labor Day hike due to our daughter, Chelsea’s, pending labor of her own, but we still managed to get over to Pismo for a few days later that week. We had been contemplating a number of hiking options in the area and, having driven down south to Solvang the day before, we decided to head north and give the Point Buchon trail a try. Where Pecho Valley Road ends in Montana de Oro State Park,…

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