In The Spirit of New Life

Since this week's hike fell on Easter weekend, our hike team had a bye week. Stacy and I decided that this would still be a good weekend to get outdoors and explore a new place to hike, even if our team was not training this weekend. The point of this hike was not so much to train as it was to just be out seeing new sites and enjoying some nice spring time scenery. It was actually a very nice way to spend an Easter Sunday since everything on the trail is blooming into life, which is pretty symbolic of what Easter is all about in the first place. In a weird way, everything about this hike kept with the theme of new life (more on that later). Even the 7.2 earthquake kept with the theme as it brought some new life into people to wake up California from everyone's post Easter lunch comas. Signs of new life were everywhere! Great theme considering that we are hiking on a team who is trying to raise money to bring new life for blood cancer patients!

We were originally going to hike in El Moro Canyon, but we found out the park fee raised to $15 (cash only), so we decided to try our luck finding a new spot to hike. We ended up driving a little further down PCH and turning onto Laguna Canyon Road. I pulled over abruptly to what appeared to be a trail head and found out the park fee was only $3 and they had a machine that accepts cards! SOLD!!! Ironically, the trails here all connect with the ones in El Moro Canyon where we were originally going to go.

On the way to the trail head, there was a man sitting at an information table with maps, so we grabbed one and started talking to him for a bit about which trails we should hike. We found out that this area has cellular tours of the trails where you stop at a trail marker and dial the number on the post to hear info about the diversity of plant and animal life living in the area. It is official, there is no place left on Earth that hasn't been taken over by technology! We had to call it at least once to check it out, but we could not bring ourselves to take the whole audio tour. None the less, it kept us in the theme for new life. So did the weird spiky avocado looking thing I saw, it was a new form of life to me!

We were able to choose our own trails and go wherever we wanted to go, which we are not able to do with our team. This led us to deciding to take a trail back down to the main road where we THOUGHT the parking lot would be. I thought we were on the right path since I saw an abnormal rock formation, which is a sign hikers use to let other hikers know that they are on the way to civilization. It turned out that we were a mile or two south of the parking lot where our car was, so we had to hike back up the road. At this point, I was about to hitch a ride. Hitch-hiking is still considered hiking, right?

While we were walking up the road, we noticed that all of the buildings were either animal rescues, shelters, or boarding facilities, and there was even a dog park. We usually get to see some form of wildlife on the trail, but we completely did not expect what we saw next. One of the buildings said it was a seal and sea lion rescue shelter and visitors are welcome. Yet again, we were seeing signs of new life on our hike, and discovering something that we could never have predicted. We walked straight into an area much like a boarding facility for dogs with chain link enclosures for the seals and sea lions, each cage with it's own pool and a few seals, sea lions, or elephant seals. It was like watching, what Stacy called, water dogs because of how some were being lazy in the sun, some were playing and barking, and others were even scratching their ear holes with their hind flippers. Most of these animals had been rescued from oil spills and were being rehabilitated to go back into the wild. In other words, they were being given a second chance at life!

Our purpose for being on a hike team through the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is to try and help give a second chance at life to patients diagnosed with blood cancers, so hiking on Easter Sunday and seeing other signs of new life was very encouraging! I could've used our botanist hike coach to tell me what the weird spiky avocado looking thing was though! If you would like to donate to our cause and help give a second chance at life to blood cancer patients, go to our website here: http://pages.teamintraining.org/ocie/Yosemit110/TeamLostDogs

Speaking of new life, congratulations to our friends Elena and Scott on their new baby girl, Samantha Olivia Spencer! Hope she gets to come home soon!!!

"Easter Seals"


"Easter Seals 2, The Sequel"