Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Out and About: Bernardo Bay Trail (Lake Hodges)

A couple of weekends ago, my husband & I were thinking about taking a day trip but instead ended up choosing to do this hike in Escondido. The route we took was very easy (no elevation) and relatively short (perhaps 1 hour). It was a chilly morning, absolutely perfect for a hike. We enjoyed it immensely.

Beginning of the trail.

Hills in the distance.

Cactus "garden."

Lake Hodges perhaps doesn't look impressive to those of you who live in non-desert climates, but a friend told me recently that every time he's done this hike, there wasn't any water at all:


I loved how green the hills were. Come Fall, nothing will be green anymore. We've probably had just about as much rain as we're going to get this year:


Final shots:

Rocky hill.

A greener view of the lake.

Pretty trail shot.

Afterward, we drove over to Encinitas to ruin all the karma we built up during the hike with a visit to Betty's Pie Whole. If you're ever in SD county, I highly recommend it.

2 comments:

Patricia said...

Much like the rainy fall/winter/spring in Portland makes one fully appreciate the sun, so does the green in the desert. I used to love the Boise Foothills in the springtime.

What do you think about hikes that take only a hour? There are several in the Gorge and I never want to drive all that way to spend an hour hiking. An hour's hike in Forest Park would be fine, though.

balyien said...

Yeah, as long as it's close, an hour hike is good. I wouldn't want to drive for more than 30 minutes or so just to do an hour hike, I think. Most of the ones I do near me are short. This year, I'm hoping to branch out as I get back into better shape. Gotta get going on it, though. In a few months it'll be too hot to do a lot of the hikes. The one thing that's bad about hiking around here is that most trails don't have much shade.