Julian & Cuyamaca Peak
We took off Friday, July 27th, to a secret place we know about up in Julian, the apple pie capital of Southern California, for a weekend of camping, hiking, drinking, swimming and eating (not necessarily in that order) with Lorri's sister Lynn and her family: hubby Steve and kids Ashley and Sara and deer-sized dog, Gracie. This secret spot is a great place to camp and our friends, Dana & Lisa Seguin, live on a sprawling Julian estate just up the road.
On the left are Ashley, Sara and Lorri in the background getting ready to cook another gourmet campers' delight. On the right are Lynn and Steve Evers.
Thanks to Dana for inventing (or remembering) the rustic sport of stick scraping with a dull rock. The kids had hours of entertaining fun shaping their walking sticks. That's Sara on the left and Ash on the right.
Here they are posing in front of their weekend home.
On the left, Ashley is perhaps pondering the many adventures she'll have with her new walking stick. On the right Gracie is relaxing and waiting for the next round of s'mores.
GCB90, July 28, 2001
On Saturday, the girls went to the pool while the guys, Steve, Dana and I, went in search of Melissa's Trek Cache, high up on Cuyamaca Peak. Thanks to Dana's knowledge of the area, we had a great hike of nearly nine miles and an elevation gain of over 2000 feet. The 300KB image below shows our route and profile. I would highly recommend this route to future cachers.
Dana was the first to spot the Cache, pretty darn close to where he's standing with it. The middle photo gives an idea of the spectacular views from the cache site. On the right is a photo of the three of us taken by our new friends, Chris, Mindy and Homer the beagle.
After finding the cache we continued up the road to the top of Cuyamaca peak where we sat on the boulders and enjoyed the views. We also extolled the thrill and excitement of Geocaching and GPS technology to our new friends. I don't think Homer got it all, but Mindy and especially Chris seemed interested. I think Chris will own a GPS receiver soon.
On the left are Dana, Mindy and Homer and Steve. Speaking of Homer the seven month old beagle, it came up in conversation that beagles would eat anything. Sure enough, as if to prove it, on the walk down the trail a little later, Homer enjoyed a snack of fresh road apple. (Not the famous Julian apple pie type apple but the rear end of a horse type apple, yuck!) On the right is the group at the top. This was a busy area on Saturday afternoon.
These two photos won't interest anybody except surveyors and other geeky type geocachers. They are survey control points at the peak.
Along the road toward the summit is a bench with this plaque in memory of Iris Kenna who was attacked and killed by a mountain lion in this area in 1996. The middle photo shows Steve (with tongue hanging out) and Dana at the end of the hike. On the right is a view of Cuyamaca Peak from where we were parked. It was a great hike on a great day and the cold beer back at camp tasted especially refreshing.