Last week, I stopped by a "yard" sale in the apartments — a couple, moving back to Richmond, Virginia after having been here a couple years, after, of course, living in Arlington. They had a book of day hikes complied by the local Sierra Club. A few years old, but a range of hikes, difficult to easy, local to far. And all with good driving directions. We set out on the Diablo Canyon to Rio Grande: 6 miles round trip, 400' elevation change, 3 hours.
Packed a lunch, and off we went. The drive was almost an hour, the last half on bumpy, bumpy, rutted dirt road. Poor little Golf.
The trail starts off through basalt cliffs...
before coming to an arroyo that leads to the river. The sandy ground on the arroyo made for hard going; we took to just wandering off it and into the surrounding area.
In the distance, a thunderstorm seemed to be brewing. We weren't too concerned, the past few days had seen some storms, more clouds and noise than rain and lightning. And, out here it's tough to judge distances. Anyway, clouds were welcome.
We had lunch by the Rio Grande. Looked to be high and flowing fast.
The return hike, almost exclusively off the arroyo, seemed to take longer. The storm seemed to have swung way around to the other side, missing us completely.
It's a bit late in the spring, but there was a fair amount of flora:
And some fauna:
About four hours, round trip, including lunch break. Two-and-a-half liters of water each.
1 comment:
lovely, absolutely lovely! check your email, love you both, miss you lots, ms. p
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