Someplace new

The weather was beautiful yesterday, and I hadn't been hiking for a couple of weeks. Still, I had trouble thinking of a place to go. You would think I'd be ready to go anywhere, but if I couldn't think of someplace new, I didn't want to go. Well, there's certainly a lot of territory I haven't covered near here. I finally decided to walk along a ridge near Fish Creek Hill. I thought that I might be able to get some nice canyon pictures from there.

I'm headed in that general direction.

I went by Canyon Lake on the way and that place was packed. There were vehicles parked in any available spot along the road. I started to worry that I would be caught in a huge traffic jam on the way home. I kept going, though. There were even more people than usual at the rest stop at the top of Fish Creek Hill. The road is dirt out there and the washboard was pretty bad and it was full of pits but that didn't seem to be keeping anybody away. When I started walking out along the ridge, I could see a couple sitting in lawn chairs overlooking the side canyon between me and them. At first I thought that seemed a little strange, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. You could enjoy the beautiful scenery and watch buzzards and hawks. It would be kind of like sitting on the beach, but without the water.

At the beach, without the beach.

I didn't quite get the view of the canyon that I had hoped for, but it was still a nice view. I made a panorama of the view from the end of the ridge and put a scaled down version on Panoramio. Click here to see that picture. Click on the picture there to see it full size. I'm thinking that maybe I should have made that picture an HDRI. If you look in the right spot in that picture, you can see the couple in their lawn chairs.

Most of the cars were still parked at the lake when I went by there on the way home, so traffic wasn't bad. I've decided I don't want to get on the roads today and tangle with the crowds coming home from Memorial Day trips, though. Click below to see all of the pictures.

2011_05_29