Getting back to my roots

Growing up in Oregon I spent a lot of time in the great outdoors. Lots of camping, hiking and backpacking. When I went off to college in 2001 I had a shift of interests. I started playing more music, I started skiing more, and I started rock climbing more. I realize the last two are very much outdoor activities, just not the same that were my main interests before. I think the last time I had hiked more than a few miles was probably the summer before I went to BYU. Anyway, with a long weekend and a forecast of great weather, I decided to check out some of the close hiking spots. I found a book called "60 Hikes Within 60 Minutes", it has a ton of hikes (you could say about 60) that are really close to the bay area. I picked one that was close to peninsula and off I went. I ended up going to the Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve. It was about half an hour from my apartment. I had to drive to Half Moon Bay and then head back into the Santa Cruz mountains. I picked a 7 mile loop that took me up a creek and then around a ridge and back down. It was a decent little hike. I also picked up an app called Trails for my iPhone that recorded my GPS track points along the way. That way I could import them into Google Earth and check out exactly where I was. It worked pretty well. Hiking for about 3 hours drained about half my battery though, so it wasn't super good, but good enough for what I wanted. Here is a pic of my hike as shown in Google Earth from my GPS positions:


I need to do this more often or Alaska is going to own me when we go in May, which is now 5 months away.