Not the steepest trail, but a great distance hike that starts on the eastern side of the Arroyo Seco, overlooking Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For the first 2.5 km (1.5 miles), you’ll wonder if you’re actually on a nature hike as the trail starts off on pavement and stays within sight of houses. Once you […]

The trail was hot and dusty when we started walking at 2:30 in the afternoon. We made sure the dogs had plenty of water before starting, but even so, they started panting and looking miserable within a few minutes of getting on the trail. Our solution was a trick we saw in brittany field trials…we […]

Our rescued brittanys love hiking with us and have even ridden on kayaks, but I think their favorite thing to do is go to the beach (just like us). We knew that our friends visiting from France could enjoy Huntington Beach Dog Beach as much as the dogs, so it was an easy choice for […]

We often talked about buying a GPS as we wondered how far we hike and what elevation gain and loss we experience. After seeing several great websites that cover hikes in GPS detail, we decided to make the investment and purchased a Garmin 62s. This model is meant for hiking and could once and for all […]

We spent ‘The Fourth’ visiting our friends who live on the Peninsula at Newport Beach, California, and as always, took Gwenn and Mitch, our rescued French and American brittanys along. Rather than leave them back at the house when it was time to kayak, we decided to let them come along just to see how […]

Getting ready for our trek in Nepal meant having some great practice hikes in the local Los Angeles area. We chose Ice House Canyon, just south of Mount Baldy, only an hour from Pasadena.  Ice House Canyon is a very popular hike in this area, but is typically a late Spring or Fall hike, when […]

There are two pleasures in life that can’t be beaten…1) finding money in your pocket, and, 2) realizing you have a three-day weekend at the last minute.  Just before the July 4th weekend, we experienced the second and made a quick decision to spend the weekend in Cottonwood Lakes and climbing the New Army Pass.  […]

We made a last minute decision to rent a cabin near Lake Isabella, CA for Christmas 2010. This area is very popular in the summer for whitewater rafting on the Kern River and for boating on Lake Isabella. The mountains aren’t quite as high as the Sierra Nevadas to the North but are close enough […]

We’ve adopted two brittanys that for different reasons, haven’t become gun dogs. We were delighted, though, when we were invited to the American Brittany Club’s Fall Field Trials held in early October 2010 at the “El Rancho Espanol de Cuyama”, AKA Spanish Ranch in gorgeous Santa Ynez, California. We were eager to go partly because Mitch’s mother, […]

It was odd that we hadn’t hiked up Mt Baldy in all our years in Pasadena.  “Baldy” is the highest peak surrounding the Los Angeles Basin at 3069m. (10,068 ft.).  Officially Mt San Antonio, it is a pyramid-shaped mountain that has no trees and few features near the top, thus the name. Baldy has a […]