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How was your Thanksgiving? We hope that you got some exercise in before you started eating and watching football all day.
Our Leash Your Fitness group started the day with the first peak of our 5 Peak Challenge in Mission Trails. They headed up Kwaay Paay and enjoyed the beautiful views on the crisp morning!
Mommy, daddy and I headed north toward Pasadena and hiked a new trail called Chantry Flats to Hoegees Camp. Mommy found the hike on the internet and when the man said that it gets crowded, he was not kidding! We arrived at 10:50 a.m. and the cars were lined up all of the way down the road! Both parking lots were full but we scored and got a spot when an early morning hiker was leaving. You do have to have an adventure pass here and it looked like they sold them there but since it was a holiday and everything was closed, we took our chances on a ticket along with mostly everyone else that was parked there that day!
We were not sure where to go but we imagined that most of the people were heading to the waterfalls so we headed in the opposite direction. We turned right at the bathrooms and headed UP the trail instead of down the road/trail. It started on a fire road but it was already pretty and shaded!
We turned right on to a single track trail. We were just guessing where we were going since we did not have a map, but we lucked out!
The trail was so beautiful and completely shaded!
It seemed like we were heading up and up and up but it was a gradual ascent so we thought that maybe there was going to be a top with a view?
There was not many people on this trail but the ones that we saw were coming toward us. We finally asked a family where we were going to end up and they suggested that we do the loop toward Hoegees Camp. She said we were doing the loop backwards but it was totally worth doing.
So at about 2.5 miles, we turned right toward the camp sign and started descending. We ended up finding the camp and there were people there cooking their Thanksgiving meal over the fire! We didn’t see any campers but there was an outhouse and lots of camp sites!
There was even a little shed with tools on it for campers to put out their fires! So cool!
The best part was the creek ended in a little pond where I got to go swimming and rock diving!
The water was cold but I didn’t care. It looked like the creek used to be really big at one time, we are going to go back after a few rains to see if the pond is bigger and to check out the waterfalls!
We kept on going down the hill toward the end of the trail and we came upon a bunch of cabins. They were so cool and I was wondering if we could move to one of them but mommy said NO! According to So Cal Hiker, “These cabins are all privately owned and on land leased from the Forest Service. They were built between 1907 and 1936, and while at one time there were hundreds dotting the canyons, today only about 80 remain. They have no electricity or utility services, and everything must be either hand-carried or brought in by mule train, as they have been for 100 years.”
We hiked another .75 miles and then we saw people and another outhouse and trash cans and a road. We got to walk across a steel bridge before heading up the .5 mile hill back to the cars. ( Don’t quote mommy on these directions because she is not very good at knowing where she is and YES, dogs are required to be on leash, I was breaking the law because I move faster when I am not on a leash and now a days, I stay right with mommy and daddy )
The total hike was 5.5 miles and I did the entire thing myself! This was my longest hike since I got diagnosed with my brain tumor 6 weeks ago! Mommy and Daddy were so happy!
It was a great start to a fun Thanksgiving with my Uncle Bill and his family. I was a BIG help in the kitchen and we enjoyed spending the day with them in Pasadena.
We don’t wait until Thanksgiving to be Thankful! We have GRATITUDE every day for all of the wonderful things that we are able to do and for the health that we have. We try to do ONE THING every day to make the day special. Why don’t you try it, take a GRATITUDE walk and just be……
Thanks for reading! We hope that we have inspired you to take a walk in nature and if we have, please tell us about it in the comments below! It may be a hike that we don’t know about!
