Adam planned a hike for us to go to Pinnacles National Park, and it was an interesting time.  We headed to Tina’s in the morning to carpool the two hours there together.  We got in a little early and I grabbed a few apricots from the tree that overhangs Tina’s driveway.  They were delicious.  We drove to the park which had a surprising amount of traffic heading south on 101.  Once we got to the side roads there wasn’t any more traffic; although there was a little construction.

We got to the park and took a few minutes to get situated before starting on the hike.  The first part was steeply uphill, and directly into the pinnacles for which the park is named.  They were gorgeous formations with lots of bright red/orange and green/yellow lichens.  We got up to the high pass and I was already running through several liters of water, despite it only being about two miles of hiking.  We stopped by a reservoir on the way down so I could filter some just in case.  Then we got into the first cave system.  It was a short bit, but the caves were nice and cool compared to the 90’s and sun that we had up to that point in the hike.  We scrambled around the caves, eventually finding the exit and continuing down to the eastern parking lots for a lunch at the picnic tables there.

Adam pulled out a salami and ate it, while the rest of us had nuts and trail mix.  A few miles later Adam was regretting the salami, as it was strongly messing with his hydration and thus temperature regulation.  The hike was mostly flat on the second half of the day, with a longer caves section that was prettier in my opinion just south of the western parking lots.  We emerged a little worse for wear and tired.  Tina was amazing enough to drive the entire way back home, and we all crashed pretty hard that evening.