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Ryan and I took a spur-of-the-moment backpacking trip to the Sespe Wilderness this weekend. His notes and photos are here.

All in all, I felt it was a so-so trip. It was all rushed, and only three days long, so I didn't quite get into the 2-person backpacking vibe. When you hike with only one other person, you find yourself with a lot more solo time than with 3 people or more. I also was hoping to go all the way to the Sespe hot springs on the first day, but blisters prevented that. We settled for the Willette Hot Springs, which took a couple of hours to find and was pretty disappointing. I think I've been spoiled by Big Sur. We also had some technical problems (always, always buy real Nalgene!) that didn't help the overall enjoyment of the trip.

Despite all that, it was worth it. The Sespe river in May is moderately strong, and our trail crossed it at least 6 times. So if you ever go in May, hike in river-running shoes, so you don't have to stop and change shoes every hour.

Pics:

On thursday of last week Bob and I decided to go backpacking. Usually you want a week or so to prepare for a backpacking trip, even if it's only a three day trip, so when we decided thursday afternoon to leave friday morning things got a little rushed. Two trips to REI and a couple trips to the grocery store later, we were on the road. Our destination was the Sespe wilderness, in the mountains east of Ventura.

After way too much traffic through L.A. and one fabulous stop at Arby's for lunch, we finally ended up at the trailhead, at dark. The first night was spent falling asleep to the tune of about a million Arroyo toads. Anyhow, Here are a some of the photos that I took from the weekend...

Sespe Creek.

This shot was taken from our first campsite. The tent was ten feet to my left!

The little black blob on the left in the meadow is Bob walking along the trail. Just to the right is a drop-off of about 300 feet down to the river.

This is at our second campsite.

Second campsite scenery again.

This little guy didn't want his picture taken so he ran into the grass and tried to hide, I got him though! (It's a horned lizard)