"Green and Blue" Friday

Ever since I've lived away from my home in New England, I have returned for the few days allowed by the Thanksgiving holiday. But not this year. With a tight work schedule, and at the mercy of the airlines, I decided to remain in California for the break.

"There's a world out there, and you've got to look at both sides of the mountain in your lifetime."
-Bill Janklow

And if I'm going to do something different - it might as well be really, really different. While other took to the box stores in honor of Saint Black and his holiday, I traded the usual snow-covered lawns and mercury-plummeting temperatures for some milder weather and oceanic sights (oceans, mountains and valleys).

The blackberry cameras (mine and Brett's) could not capture the aura of the landscape along our 11.5 mile La Jolla/Sycamore Canyon hike. But nevertheless, here are some snaps from the day.

First part of the hike was through the flat basin. Very pretty trees. Lots of colors.













At the end of this section there was a fork in the road. We went left. The mountain bikers we met at the base of a hill we approached called it "Hell Hill". They told us it was about a tenth of a mile. They lied. It was almost half a mile and just under 1000 ft.












La Jolla Canyon trail marker and view of the valley from the top ridge






Rewarding views of Boney Mountain and the rest of the Santa Monica Mountains









We started to see the ocean to the West. So we went that way.







Made it to the ocean view















We descended a winding trail and ended up about a mile and a half north of our start point. The stretch of PCH we walked back to the trail head.