A hike with two hats.

I've been trying to do one hike a weekend. It being one of the few low impact exercises that I like doing, and also to see if I can get in decent enough shape for a 4 day hike to Machu Picchu at the beginning of September. 

We were planning on doing something easy and local. Then Wednesday I was convinced to have a beach bonfire weekend in two weeks. This seemed like a perfect time to try spinning fire. So of course I needed to go get fire poi. Two weeks was just shy of the shipping time for the slightly cheaper online store I like, so a trip to Santa Cruz seemed like best way. We were going to hike near there afterwards. 

I forgot I had signed up for a night photography hike at Russian Ridge. I had been on the waitlist. Friday afternoon I got an email saying we were off the waitlist. Originally we planned to still do all the things. Getting to bed at 4 am the night before messed that up a little. I got the poi and we made it to the hike, and that's it. 

We took some close up pictures of flowers. Since we had my mother's camera it seemed obligatory to take some.

This is actually a very small flower. It only looks huge here.

I was told this was a violet. Not sure I believe them, since it's yellow.

A few scenery (and me in scenery) pictures. It was really a beautiful place to hike, the camera didn't capture it as well as I would have liked.

The purpose of this hike was night photography. We walked out a little over two miles for a good spot to take sunset photos, and set up to watch the sunset. We got an inexpensive tripod for the occasion. Somehow we have managed not to have one. I guess we don't stand still long enough to bother.

The walk back was slow. Despite this not being the invertebrate night hike we did a few weeks ago we still had to stop and look at every bug. I didn't feel inclined to feign interest in bugs for this hike. Steven took a few pictures of them, but they are also of no interest to me.

I wish we could have walked back faster and spent more time at the end taking star pictures. We had maybe 20 min, maybe longer I'm bad at telling time.

Steven got a few interesting star shots, but it took so long to aim well and then for the camera to process the picture, that he could only focus one constellation.

Infrared mode on my mother's camera.

I think for the time being I am over night hikes, at least in the group settings I'm stuck with around here. Maybe I will go camping and then be allowed to go at my own pace, and not be stuck looking at bugs.