Hope you are all enjoying your holiday. I love long weekends. I can sleep in for FOUR days… yes! Such a bonus.
Today was Buy Nothing Day, of course, and I hope that everyone was able to steer clear of the retail hells out there. I saw many a automobile driving on the streets, the back windows packed to the limit with shopping bags. Pretty sad.
But hey, we honored BND for ourselves, and it was really a good choice. We drove down to Castle Rock State Park (which is down towards Big Basin) this afternoon, to take a hike, enjoy the views, and possibly go Geocaching. Unfortunately, we were a bit late in the day, so the sun was setting fast. We took the scenic route, and stopped along the way to enjoy a lovely valley and ocean view.
Once at the park, we scurried along the Summit Rock trail, with the last fingers of daylight disappearing more and more every minute. Lovely trail, I might add… especially with all the golden leaves falling about. The blue haze of the imminent evening was all we had to see us along the trail… I had to start using the backlight on my GPS to help us along. Hmm. Not too good of a sign, but we pressed on, with about .39 of a mile to the cache.
Darkness was falling. Fast. I could barely recognize the forms of the barren trees around us, and I had to squint to see. My GPS read .28 from the cache, and I peered in the direction that the GPS was pointing. It wasn’t comforting to see a fairly large hill ahead… this meant a quarter of a mile uphill? I was afraid that this was not feasible at this point.
Yup, it was. It was a sliver away from darkness, and we would barely make it back to the car before then. So I made the executive decision to turn back. I had almost forgotten that the hike in was mostly downhill, so we had a nice(?) challenging climb back. Jeez, I am so outta shape. I was horribly winded, but we made it back to the car as the day turned into night.
Oh look, a present.
We got a parking ticket for having the car parked after sunset. Grrrr. I guess that Buy Nothing Day bought us a lovely parking citation!
Oh well, I wouldn’t trade this experience for shopping any day.
Until I checked the link I thought you meant this castle rock. Which is we are headed today, and also maybe a stop at theGarden of Eden. We spent BND at home with the kids. Enjoy the rest of your days off.