We had planned to be out of town last and this week for a medical conference for me (in San Diego) and some time with Kelvin's family celebrating his Dad's 70th birthday (which was in July). However, due to COVID, the conference was cancelled and we, like many other families have done, cancelled our travel plans to be safe. We haven't had any days off work in about 5 months, which has felt (especially due to the mental load of COVID and workplace adjustments, patient questions, as well as pandemic parenting) like a long stretch, and Kelvin and I added back a few half-days (and meetings) but kept a few days free to do some local day hikes without kids in tow and to unplug from what has become a very tech-heavy time. Our last major hiking adventures were in February, when we had our amazing kid-free Patagonia trip before the world shut down.
Despite "trying out" our kid carriers at home, we looked forward to kid-free hiking!
One afternoon, we headed south of Eureka to the Headwaters Forest Reserve. We had taken Pepper on part of the paved trail part of this walk last in 2012 (with rainy weather), but had never ventured beyond that point (which doesn't allow dogs).
It was a pretty moderately intense 11-mile round trip, which we did in about 3.5 hours at a pretty good pace, actually rushing so we'd be back in time to grab the kids from school. I have to say that the scenery was not that impressive-- we walked through some meadow-like areas but were mostly on a woodland trail without any real viewpoint, but it was good exercise for sure. We saw a handful of other hikers, but the trail was very quiet.
On the recommendation of a friend, Karen, we checked out the Arcata Ridge Trail out of Sunnybrae, which is part of the lovely Arcata Community Forest (a web of redwood trails within city borders, right in our backyard). This trail and a nearby Beith Loop was a few miles long, and dogs were allowed, but our middle-aged pup, who's mostly been home couch-sleeping for most of the last 6 months, wasn't in great shape for walking for very long so she got carried in her pouch so as to not slow us down too much. It was really nice to walk on a different part of this trail system, which we didn't know existed (it starts at the end of a residential street).
We saw a lot of banana slugs along the way.
a long one!
Near the trail end is a nice viewpoint over the bay
This week, we went up north to explore new trails within Redwood National & State Parks.
We parked by Elk Meadow and were greeted by a herd of the resident Roosevelt Elk which can be seen (sometimes even from the Highway 101) wandering all throughout this area.
It was a bit nerve-wracking to walk past the lounging elk just a couple of feet off the side of the trail, but we did so, calmly and without making eye-contact, and didn't have any trouble (I was less comfortable when we passed bucks).
Elk droppings, full of berries
To get back to our car, we again had to get past the roaming elk, which were all over the place and had migrated a bit from their initial field!
The only creatures we had to socially distance from were these elk!
We then drove a few miles south to walk the Redwood Creek Trail, which is a mostly flat trail that follows the water (it's 16 miles round-trip but we only did about eight).
The creek is only crossable during summer months, where the park service places temporary bridges. It was shallow but on the cool side so we didn't swim or get wet.
a peaceful place for lunch
More wildlife (a doe and fawn) was spotted
pretty snail
And for your COVID laugh of the week: earlier in the week, Kelvin attended a Zoom work meeting despite being on "PTO." As a joke, he changed his background and wore sunglasses and attire suggesting he was away on a vacation cruise ... and apparently someone complained to HR that one of the medical directors wasn't taking COVID seriously, not realizing it was in total jest.
Whew! In these dark times, everyone needs to lighten up and take some much-needed days off like we did to get outside (physically distanced, of course!)!
