Author: Steve

 

Where I did my long walk.  There is a seven-mile paved loop road.

Vehicles are no longer permitted on the road, so it makes for a quiet smooth walk.  That was worth a couple laps.

 

Then it was time to wander the dirt trails.

 

 

 

 

Past plastic tubes sheltering seedlings planted to reforest a huge section along the river.

 

 

And a section of trail that had been churned up by something.

 

I was running through my mind what animal might do that much damage to dirt.  Javelina?  Wild boar?  I discovered the culprit a couple of bends in the trail later when I startled an armadillo engaged in destroying the trail.  He got off before I could get a photo of him.

 

Past local history.

 

On a trail out to the river I found where the rangers had marked an owl pellet

 

A pellet is what owls regurgitate once they’ve done all the digesting they can of teeth, skulls, claws, fur, and feathers they’ve eaten.  The gizzard compacts the indigestibles into a solid pellet and sends it back out a less dangerous route for the bird than passing all the way through the digestive tract.

 

And bobcat scat.

 

Right along one edge of the park, broccoli as far as the eye can see.

 

And onions.

 

Into the evening light.

 

And back to my little car waiting all by itself in the parking lot. 

 

Last one out.

 

 

I decided to walk a marathon distance again.  The last time I did this was in 2013:

 

https://steveandjudystravels.com/marathon/

 

For the past several weeks I’ve been doing my normal walks during the week and a longer walk each Saturday for conditioning.  My longest walk so far has been 12 ½ miles, over a time of 4 ½ hours.  Last Saturday was scheduled for a 15 mile walk.  While I was out though, I got to thinking; half a day or more at a time is a lot to devote to slightly longer walks each week, creeping toward the ultimate goal.  Maybe completing a marathon at a walking pace might be more about determination than physical conditioning.  The conditions were perfect.  The weather wasn’t predicted to get too hot.  With these thoughts in mind, I just went ahead and walked the entire marathon distance; 26.2 miles.  10 hours and 1 minute.  26 miles; the distance from Long Beach, California to Catalina Island.  The distance from our house in Louisville, Colorado to our office in Denver; my daily commute for many years.

 

My last marathon walk; it wasn’t fun all the way.  The first 20 miles were a lark, but I was shocked when I hit the wall at 20 miles.  The last 6.2 miles were agonizing.  This time I put more thought into hydration and nutrition.  Hydration is the easy part; all it takes is water.  I scheduled a trip back past the car to replenish supplies every 8 miles or so.  Two new water bottles each time did the trick.  Nourishment is a little more difficult for me.  I often do a food-fade after lunch, so normally anything energetic has to be done in the morning.  I can’t limit an entire marathon to a single morning though, it’s an all-day affair, so I needed a food solution.  Last time I took a ham sandwich along, ate half of it about lunchtime and the other half later in the day.  Maybe less than optimal nutrition was what made me hit a wall.  I already know that energy bars are not good for me either; they sap my energy; I crash after.  There is something just right about an oat and honey granola bar though.  It must be just the right balance of protein, fat, and carbs for me.  So to keep my blood sugar stable for an entire day, I carried a handful of granola bars to munch throughout.  That strategy worked perfectly.  No wall.  The entire walk was fatiguing, but it was fun the whole time.

 

I did the entire distance within Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge.  There is a 7-mile scenic loop.  I walked that a couple times, along with every other trail in the park a time or two, tracking my progress with GPS so I’d know when I got to the exact distance.  The last time I walked this distance I was still in my sixties.  Now I’ve walked a marathon distance while in my mid 70s!  I should probably do this every decade…  I’d better hurry up and turn 80.

 

 

We were living in Issaquah, outside Seattle, from 1972 to 1974.  Women were disappearing.  Young women with long brown hair parted in the middle, just like Judy.  We had noticed that similarity.  There were no bodies.  These were not known to be killings, there were just young women disappearing with no explanations.

 

We spent one afternoon at the beach at the south end of Lake Sammamish and left at dusk in our VW Bus.  Just outside the park we came across a guy hitchhiking.  It was common to hitchhike then.  Guys would hitchhike.  Girls would hitchhike.  I hitchhiked home from work in Seattle when I worked later than the bus ran.  We picked up hitchhikers.  We picked this guy up.  It was 1974.  I was driving and didn’t see all that much of him as he sat in the back seat in the dark, but he was a normal-looking guy about our age.  His arm was in a sling.  It was a pleasant ride; we all chatted while we drove out of our way to take him home.  He directed us all the way to the north end of Lake Sammamish where he was going and by now it was raining.  At a dark intersection just off the main road, he said you can let me out here.  I said no problem, we didn’t mind, we’d take him right to his door.  At that point he got insistent.  “No.  Just drop me here.”  That’s the only thing that seemed out of the ordinary.  He asked for a ride home, but then stopped us before we got all the way there and was going to walk the rest of the way in the rain.

 

It wasn’t until later we heard about the two women who went missing in one day from the beach at Lake Sammamish and the suspect was a good-looking young guy with his arm in a sling.  Did we give Ted Bundy a ride?

 

 

Sent this great shot of a high-altitude observatory on a peak in Switzerland (Jungfraujoch).

 

Seeing that image sends me immediately back in time to my first sighting of NCAR, the National Center for Atmospheric Research from below in Boulder in 1968.  (Not my photos.  These are collected from the web.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“What’s that?”

“NCAR.”

“What does it do?  How can I get a job there?  That’s where I want to work!”

 

I wasn’t an atmospheric scientist, so never got a job there, but I got to drive the winding road up from Table Mesa any time I needed an NCAR fix.  Now, NCAR is surrounded by open space and parklands with trails branching off in both directions along the Front Range and into the canyons and peaks.  The public is invited to park in their lot for free and enjoy the glory of the environs at their pleasure.

 

 

Are doing well again this year.  The blooms have begun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the Lantana is still happy.