Ron is a tick magnet!

After leaving Death Valley we found a great camping spot in the foothills of the Sierras.  We were on the same page but didn't tell each other and instead of staying we headed for the coast.  Not terribly familiar with California we thought we would be able to find a dirt road on public land but instead found wine country with Hummer limos passing by and very expensive houses with a view.  Luckily there was a County park on the lake with space available (they had 400 camp sites) and we tucked in for the night.  After this venture we decided to try our hands at planning and found another County park (Jalama Beach) on the coast that we wanted to check out.  We had taken the Amtrak through this area a couple years ago and loved the green grassy rolling hills with great views of the ocean.  The ranger quickly pointed us to a beach side campsite that had just been vacated.  Turns out that it was the most expensive night of camping we had ever had but the site was just too amazing to turn down.  We lounged in the sun all day and read, but once we had dinner and the wind had turned to gale force, we decided to go for a nice walk on the beach.  We saw a lot of sand in transport and a sea otter fighting the blowing spray off of the waves.  We continued our drive up Highway 1 to Big Sur only to find that a landslide had closed the road.  Ron knew that I really wanted to see this section of the coast and we drove as far as we could.  The vistas of the steep cliffs and ocean were unbelievable.

                      



Our next venture was a backpack trip in the Ventana Wilderness.  We were not able to locate a map of the area and after some extreme difficulty we were able to access the hiking trails without paying a daily usage fee.  With photos of our atlas for a map and photos of the trail signs, we headed out for what we thought would be three nights.  Ron had developed a rather ambitious 40 mile loop to a ridge overlooking Big Sur.  Three miles and two stream crossings (which we thought were cute and fun even though the water was thigh deep and moving quickly) into the hike we ran into a guy who looked as though his spirit was crushed.  He told us that he had started his hike at 8 am that morning and had done 30 river crossings.  We quickly realized that our ambitious plan would be cut short.  After trekking through tons of poison in flip flops, Ron discovered that we had an added hazard.  He found a tick attached to his belly.  Luckily it was not nibbled too far in and he was able to pull it out.  We ended that day after 7 hours and 8-ish miles.  You may think that after the first tick we would have been a little more vigilant about checking for them, but this was not the case.  Ron found a second tick that made his ribcage its home.  This one was a bit more entrenched and took some swiss army knife surgery to remove.  In the morning we decided to vastly scale back our hiking plan.  We followed the sign post to a trail that looked promising at first.  It turned out to be more of a route climbing over/under logs and shrubs through fields of poison oak (in the photo of Ron, he is surrounded by primarily poison oak) with ticks on all vegetation and rain showers.  There was no trail for the most part, just pink flagging, and our motivation came from the fact that we did not want to turn around and retrace our steps.  After reaching the main trail (three miles and almost 5 hours later), it was smooth sailing to a camp that was surrounded by the largest Ponderosa Pines we have ever seen.  The remainder of the hike contained a slight detour and alternating fields of poison oak and ridges covered in ticks.  Sometimes the poison oak was covered in ticks.  We estimate that we brushed at least a hundred ticks off of us between the two of us. 



We then headed to Erin and Beth's house in Santa Cruz to reorganize and hang out for a bit.  We are very lucky to have friends that are willing to share their house and washing machine.  Our tour of Santa Cruz included taco Thursday, playing pool, becoming one with a very comfortable couch, and eating fabulous tuna and steak.  We are now off to do a backpacking trip along the Lost Coast Trail near Shelter Cove.