On Saturday we completed our first trail on the
from the
East Bay Regional Park District
. We only have six weeks to hike four more trails to complete the Challenge. We hiked at
, in Union City. I have driven passed this park hundreds of times and never even noticed it was there. I was pleasantly surprised today.
Jordon Pond
We started hiking on High Ridge Trail and hiked past Jordon Pond within the first 10 minutes. I tried "hiding" the pond from my toddlers because one wants to stop and throw rocks and the other wants to go swimming in it.
We hiked quite a while on High Ridge Trail and had pretty views of the Bay. My daughter, Sophia was getting pretty fussy so we took her out of my backpack so she could walk around. She was happily playing around until she tripped and fell face first into the ground. We did not noticed right away but she had cut her left nostril and was bleeding a little bit and scratched up her forehead a little bit.
After Sophia was patched up, we continued hiking on High Ridge Trail until my son needed to use the "facilities". We stopped to look for a "bathroom" and found a spot a little off the trail near a giant Oak tree. I saw something move off to the right and I though it was a rabbit but then I saw antlers. I may have gasped out of excitement so loud that I scared my son, David. He scares easily so I I've learned to quickly turn a startling situation into something fun. I told him to be really quite and knelt down next to him so we could see the buck. The buck and I had a staring contest. I'm glad David had to go to the bathroom or else I would have never seen the deer. If you look right in the center of the picture below you will see the deer.
We continued on High Ridge, walked very close to some residential houses and cemetery until we turned into shaded portions of the trail. Sophia had fallen asleep so we hiked as much as we could before she woke up. We saw another hiker with his dog that was carrying a giant branch. It was really funny. The trails had lots of skinny bridges, which my son like a lot.
Nothing too exciting happened on this hike except the deer, just a nice day for a hike in the East Bay Hills. I leave you with more pictures and our hiking statistics.
Mission Peak in the far background
Daddy and Daughter
When we hiked, we moved at 2 mph but with toddlers we spent 1 hour 45 minutes not hiking.
We hiked 5.2 Miles
Hiking Trail, courtesy our our GPS.
Related Post:
Trails Challenge 2012-East Bay Regional Parks
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