Two-Heel Drive

Tom offers a big wet kiss to Bay Area trails.

… here I remain, a quarter of a century later, no worse for wear (except for that nagging bum ankle). But I still often ask myself, “What am I doing here?” and the call of “Bay Area Wild” always answers.

Probably won’t be much fun out there this weekend … I have to go out of town for a couple days so I’ll be getting no hikes in, either. But if somebody feels brave and  mud-resistant, Sunday ought to be a good day to check out Murietta Falls, though I wonder if most of this weekend’s rain will get soaked up by ground dry as a sponge left out in the sun for a couple days. If so there might not be much runoff, so you’d be hiking 12 miles with 4,000 feet of elevation gain for … well, it wouldn’t be nothing.

The Ohlone Wilderness Trail can have fantastic views when stormy weather’s passing through — clouds breaking up and sun peeking through and all of it decorating the rough hills and valleys.

Tom stopped by that place of general, all-around wonderfulness in Utah.

Somehow, in the conditioned mind, you’re not supposed to see or associate water with an arid environment. And yet here! –and there! - and everywhere! - it exists, flowing (mostly) uninterrupted, from recondite and ancient sources, near and far, thanks to the age-old natural phenomena of rain and snow.

He was there in early summer; might be dryer now. Nevertheless, it’s the go-to locale in the Southwest.

I managed to omit Gambolin’ Man’s blog from the collection of essential sites I posted the other day. Its owner, who also has the good sense to be named Tom, is a honcho of sorts at the University of California at Berkeley but there’s nothing boss-like at his blog, where he loves to write at length about his travels on trails around the Bay Area. He also was the one who introduced me to the excellent Las Trampas Regional Wilderness in Contra Costa County. He has foot issues that oblige him to break out his bicycle for wheeled (vs. heeled) adventures, like biking all day to the top of Mount Hamilton, one of the truly hard-core routes in the region.