Along the ridge line...

After hiking up to Fort Anderson last week, I wanted to get up on the ridgeline this week.  Will planned out a really long hike taking the full ridge from Danville to Alamo in the east side of Los Trampas.  We headed up on a warm day after parking one car in Alamo and driving back down to Danville to start the hike.  The weather was warm but not hot.  We had a really steep ling climb to start out that got us all sweaty!  Right off the bat, we could see the whole valley.  We could see Will's office in San Ramon, our house, the kid's schools, everything!  It was beautiful  

Wyatt reprised his role as trailblazer and leader. 

The poppies were gorgeous!  We are having some kind of super bloom right now.  Will was talking to an EBMUD land management guy on our last hike.  He said he had been up in the hills for the last 30 years and not seen poppies blooming like this.  We feel pretty lucky to be seeing all these poppies so close to home. 

We went up and down the hills over the ridgeline.  The views were spectacular.  We could really see the poppies over on the other ridgeline on the west side.  Will estimated our hike would be about 8 miles from end to end.

We stopped at an old favorite snack stop.

Poor Will, hauled our snacks and water and he helped stragglers up the inclines.  We didn't bring enough water for how warm it was and he sacrificed his portion to thirsty kids.

Really it was poor Clare.  She hurt her shoulder dancing a week or so ago.  She just needs to keep it immobilized and it should heal.  But as we were hiking down a dry, loose, gravely hill Clare slipped and threw her hand out to break her fall.  She caught herself with the arm and shoulder that was injured and really hurt herself again.  We tried to comfort Clare but there wasn't a lot we could do...and we still had three more miles to hike.  Boo.

As we did the up and over another hill for a 360-degree view of the valley I realized I could use my tanktop as a sling for Clare.  I wish I could give credit to some first aid I might have learned in girls camp but I'm pretty sure they would have told me to let Clare deal with her own arm rather than have me bare my mid-drift.  No, taking off my shirt was my own original idea! 

Our last hill gave us the best views!  The poppies were as beautiful as ever and we could see the whole valley.  We were almost done with the hike and really tired. 

We missed the turnoff for the end of our hike and ended up adding on about a quarter of a mile.  Then we had to walk through a gated neighborhood and down the road about another mile to get to the car.  The whole hike ended up being nine and a half miles!  We were tired, thirsty, hungry, and triumphant.  We earned burgers and fries for sure!