weekend adventures

After a typical Saturday morning cleaning and working on projects at church we decided to practice for our big backpacking trip this summer (stay tuned for more details!).  We have a tendency to complain that there's nowhere close by to go hiking, since there are no mountains within a few hours, and East Bay is a pretty urban area.  However, there are some nice regional parks in the area, and Quinn found a 9 mile loop that we could hike in Wildcat Canyon Regional Park, a mere 20 minutes from our home.

Many places we might feel quite silly carrying our big backpacks all loaded down around in a small-ish regional park, but hey, it's the bay area.  We did get a few odd looks, but most people didn't even notice.  Anyways, we filled up as many water bottles as we own, dragged out our camping gear, and then loaded  up our two packs.  They weighed something like 40 lbs a piece, but we didn't actually weigh them.  If something had happened and we had to stay out there longer than expected, we would have been fairly well prepared!

For most of the hike we were on a ridge, so had gorgeous 360 views of the area.  Above you can see San Pablo Reservoir, and if you turned around you would be looking out towards San Francisco and the ocean. It was also great because there weren't many people in this part of the park, and parking wasn't an issue at all.  Only downside was that the trail was paved for some of the time.  But, we saw lots of animals-- lizards, snakes, turkeys, and cows.  I was SO tired by the end after carrying all the weight ... I guess more motivation to get better at running hills, and to practice perseverance. :)

Did you have any weekend adventures?