Ah, a sunny Friday! By law, you must leave work early, and so I did. Drove home, changed, grabbed the dog, and headed off to pick up Roya. We made it to the trail by 5:00, which gave us at least 2 hours of sunlight, and so decided to take the longer trail that had been closed until recently.

Phew.

I had forgotten just how much longer that trail is - and as the one who suggested it, I was not allowed to bitch (those are the rules). Roya however, had no such restriction, and there was quite a few "are we there yet?"s. I was right there with her.

For those of you who would like to follow our path, here's the trail map, with our path marked in red: 


On the way up, we took the Cora Older Trail until it connects to the Seven Springs Loop (Zero springs were seen by these hikers, although we were a bit loopy toward the end of the hike) We followed the Seven Springs Loop down the side of one hill, then back up the other, running into a fair amount of mountain bikers. We saw a good number of indicators that horses had also taken the same route, but I have yet to actually see a horse on any of the trails.

Since it's still spring, almost all the plant life is full and green, and there are wildflowers everywhere:


One of these days, I'll bring my Audubon wildlife book, and see what I can identify.

We came out from the Loop right below Hunter's Point, but neither me, Roya, or the dogs felt like scaling that hill. We decided to head downhill:


We made it back to the car by 6:30 - which, considering our fairly leisurely pace, was pretty damn good time.