To Spruce Grove, and beyond!!!

That title doesn't look terribly witty. I should probably stick to my day job. Not like I plan to make any money off this Blog anyway...unless I put a Paypal donation button on the side. I wonder...if I did that...would anyone actually use it??? I wouldn't do that anyway, I despise beggars because most of them don't need the money anyway, or if they do, they only need it because they're not making any attempt to actually do anything with their life. That said, I do admire the work ethic of some of downtown L.A.'s perpetually homeless folks. I pass through Union Station at approx. 5:30am and there are already beggars hitting me up for spare change.

I get off the train at Pershing Square and walk a few blocks to the office and the other morning I ran into a woman who could have been my mother. I don't mean she looked like my mum, but she was in her late 50s to 60s, quite well dressed, clean, well groomed, in other words she looked like your typical middle-class elderly woman. When she said "Excuse me" I stopped to hear her out because she did not look like your average beggar, and then she asked me for change, and I said "Sorry" to her and walked on. I had another early riser hit me up one time but as soon as I heard him say, "I live in Santa Ana..." I cut him off. "No change, buddy."

Looking at the title of this entry this was not meant to be a rant on homeless people and I'm pretty sure I've done that already. Oh, I see how I derailed myself, so, back to the actual topic.

This past weekend was supposed to be the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower. When my Mum was here this time last year we sat out in the backyard and tried to see some meteors, but we were SOL - too much ambient light - so I promised my son that next year (being now) I'd take him camping and we'd see some meteors for sure. Although apparently the ones you see are really meteorites, if I recall my High School Astronomy correctly. Meteors are in outer space, meteorites are the ones that enter Earth's atmosphere.

So it was this time of year again (isn't that a redundant saying? Isn't it always "That time of year"?) and the annual Perseid Meteor Shower was passing by so I decided the boy and I would head up into the Angeles National Forest and go camping and maybe see some meteors.

I got off work early on Friday, and after dicking around at home getting everything packed (we were going for one fucking night and it still seemed to take forever to get our shit together), plus a trip to the hardware store for a hatchet, followed by a trip to the market for a packet of hotdogs, we were finally off. Fortunately the entrance to the park is not far from home so by 4pm (or so) we were parked at Chantry Flat (in the last freaking space in the lot, at 4pm, on a Friday afternoon. Incredible!) had our packs on our backs and were heading into the wilderness.

I'd come down here a few weeks earlier with the family, and I'd planned to do the 4-mile roundtrip via Camp Hoagee, except we missed our turn off and wound up at Sturtevant Falls instead, which for a family hike was actually a much more pleasant destination than 4 miles of nowhere. I'd also been to the Falls a couple of times before but had never gone any further. Fortunately I had a map, and the trail had decent signs pointing the way, so I was pretty confident we would find the Spruce Grove campsite. However, having never been past Sturtevant Falls before I was not prepared for what was in store for the boy and me.

The boy is 11 now. He does Tae Kwon Do a couple of times a week, plays golf with me (occasionally), and lately has been taking tennis lessons once a week with his uncle. He's not fat, not at all, in fact he's in pretty good shape compared to many of his friends, but he had never been on a hike like what I had planned for us.

We hiked the 1 1/2 miles along the trail to Sturtevant Falls until we came to the Spruce Grove turn-off, and then made our first decision. Did we want to take the "Horse Trail" (so called because the packmules which supply Camp Sturtevant come that way) or did we want to take Upper Falls Trail which took us, obviously enough, above Sturtevant Falls. We went with the Upper Falls Trail and it was...interesting.

And here's a picture. Actually, here's a few. As always, you can click 'em to make 'em bigger.
This is the edge of the pool at the base of the Falls. There are people down there. We're pretty high up. Not like thousands of feet in the air, but definitely vertigo-inducing, if you're susceptible to that sort of thing.

This shot was taken pretty much from the path itself, I just leaned over a tad. There were sections of the path so narrow that you could not put both feet down side-by-side, and the drop-off at those sections was not unlike that in this picture.

And then there were sights like this cave. At least I think it's a cave. We didn't go in there, or even stop to take a closer look; we were in a race with the sun. I knew we were close when I smelled smoke from a campfire, then we crested a hill and although the scenery didn't change, it opened up a little, and the sight that greeted us was very welcoming.

Several of the camp spots were already occupied but the one closest to where we came in was free so we quickly claimed it. For a campground 4 miles into the forest it was actually quite decent. Each site had a cleared area to pitch your tent; a picnic table with bench seats; and two fire places, one a fire pit with a hinged grate (which could be swung onto the fire, or lifted out of the way), and the second an almost enclosed fire place (with a chimney) and a flat piece of griddle-like iron on top.

Dinner that night was beans with hot dogs, grilled the traditional way on a forked stick. The dogs, that is; the beans were heated up in a frying pan that I carried in my pack, along with the tins of beans, hot dogs, bowls, etc. The boy carried his pack but he just had a few bottles of water, his sleeping bag & sleeping mat, spare socks and a warm sweater. I had the same in my pack, too, but I also had the tent. I planned to weigh my pack before we set out, but I forgot, and that's probably a good thing. I know the military do crazy hikes with 60-100 lbs packs but they train for that shit AND they get paid to do it. I was doing this for fun...sort of.

Baked beans and grilled hot dogs. After a 2 1/2-hour hike that simple fare tasted unbe-fucking-lieavable! It was seriously good. The boy ate 1 1/2 dogs and not quite a full tin of beans. I added the remnants of his beans to my own tin along with 2 1/2 dogs. After the dishes were done (washed in the nearby & apparently freezing cold stream) we lay down next to the fire, stared up at the sky, and looked for meteors, while silently berating the City-boys in the next site over who insisted on shining their super bright flashlight all over the place. We lay there looking up at the night sky and saw lots of stars but no meteors.

"Want to keep looking, or go to bed?" I asked the boy.

"Keep looking," he replied. So we did.

A while later I repeated my question and this time he chose "Bed". Not surprisingly. I'm sure even without the food his pack was still pretty heavy. For the next few hours I tossed & turned, dozed off & woke up, until some time after midnight when I finally managed to stay asleep until 6am.

Wanting to get going before it got too hot I woke the boy up, and 45 minutes later we had the tent packed up, had eaten breakfast (granola bars), and were on our way. The return journey was not back out the way we came but further in, past Camp Sturtevant, up Mt. Zion, down the other side, through Camp Hoagee and on to Chantry Flat, being a total distance of approximately 5 1/2 miles.

Again the boy did amazingly well and we were back at the car by 9:30am.

"Want to do something like this again?" I asked him.

"Maybe," he said, "but not quite as long."

I know how you feel, son ;)