Birthday Hike

Last Saturday was Josh's birthday. We had made a few plans put they all fell through (its tough to have a birthday Memorial Day weekend!) so Friday night we decided to take a hike in the morning. I'd read about Dripping Cave in Aliso Woods on a hiking blog and wanted to check it out. So we headed out a little after nine with Uncle Trevor and Nanny. It was a perfect day for a hike, a little overcast in the morning, but once that burned off it was just gorgeous.

Not ten minutes into our hike and a jogger lept off the dirt path that runs a long the paved path Parker, Nanny and I were on. We all jumped when he finally spat out, "SNAKE!" and shakily pointed to where he just was. Sure enough, there was a BIG rattlesnake sunning itself across the path. "I almost stepped on it!" Poor guy nearly had a heart attack. The snake couldn't have been less interested in us, he never so much as flicked his tail. The boys totally missed the whole thing, as they had gone on up ahead.

There's his rattle

And his head

And his body

1 mile!

Photo op at the man-made waterfall you can't see in this pic

Fin at the top of Cave Rock (I love this picture!)

Small cave in Cave Rock

Poison (hemlock) never looked so pretty (Parker took this one)

And this one ("I'm gonna take a picture of my shoes cause I want to remember them Mama.")

A fairy and a Nanny

Dripping Cave - It was used by stage coach robbers, you can still see the black from their campfires on the ceiling of the cave

2.5 miles! It was about 5 miles roundtrip

The kids got tired on the last leg back. Daddy improvised.

It didn't work out so well for Parker

Halfway through the hike a man walked by with a big doberman. Parker stood about a foot away from him, pointed right in his face and loudly asked, "WHY DOES THAT GUY HAVE HIS DOG???" The guy turned bright red and sheepishly muttered, "I'm sorry...I didn't know..." Parker read all the signs coming in, including the one that said NO DOGS.

We wrapped up our day with lunch at Rubio's and then dessert at Powell's Candy Shop, the best candy shop ever. Every single candy you could ever dream of is crammed in this place. Josh got some huge cherry monstrosity, Parker swedish fish, Fin a jawbreaker on a stick (jaw-li-pop) and after my first attempt to leave with Sugar Daddy's was scornfully dismissed by a certain mother-in-law I left with caramel bullseyes. And she was totally right about the Sugar Daddys. ;)