Friday was Good Friday, so our daughter Kate was off work, and home to take care of Charlise.....TLE and I headed out for our favorite Mt. Rubidoux hike with the intent of descending the trail to the south side of the mountain and then picking up the SART trail to hike back to our car....we figured we could cover over 5.5 miles......however, as we all know....the best laid plans, right?
We arrived at the trailhead about 1000, but there were no parking spots available, so we headed down to the dog park in the west side of the mountain and began our walk from there, and we were on our way to the summit......we chose to transition to the south trail to take the steeper, but shorter route to the top and then descend on the north trail once again transitioning to the lower half of the south trail to arrive at the south trailhead, but just about 1/3 mile from the summit we were turned back by city employees who were in the process of removing a bee hive along the trail, so we headed back down........
......once at the bottom we made a right hand turn on Tequesquite Ave. for two blocks and then right again on the SART, which took us back to the dog park parking lot and our Beetle. In all we covered just 3.7 miles due to the bee hive detour, but it was still a great walk.
We were home by 1130 and relaxing......the only other thing we had going on Friday was a drive up to the Fontana Elks Club for dinner, and orientation....our official initiation will be April 19th at their membership meeting. We met our good friends Steve and Candy for 'Taco Night' dinner, and met a number of new people. One thing I have noticed over the years is that generally most people you meet who belong to service clubs not only tend to be good people, but interesting people.
We arrived just before 1700 hours, and ordered drings ($3 each)....TLE some white wine, and for me a draft Amber Bach. After dinner we watched an orientation video, and spent another hour, so sitting around a big round table getting to know more people (Maureen - camp host), Pat, retiring ER (Exalted Ruler), Gary (future ER), Mike, Phyllis, Kathleen....and on and on it goes.....what a great group of people. There are probably other Elks Lodges whose dues are less per year, but we wanted our 'home lodge' to be a place where we would revisit over and over again when we come into SoCal, and where we would have friends so the Fontana Lodge works perfectly for us! Our goal in becoming Elks has always been twofold.....1) To have access to camping opportunities as we crisscross the USA, but also 2) for the social aspects.
We were home by 2100 hours and off to dreamland by 2230.....thanks for stopping by!
since my comments on 3-23 did not show up I wanted to try again and see what it takes to post here.
ReplyDeleteI had commented about how wonderful granddaughters are. Mine is almost 8 and she loves to help her Papa do projects. She was helping me prepare for adding a new bathroom when she told me that helpers are the most important people because nothing would get done without them.
She is a lot of fun to have helping me on my projects...and she's always asking to do more of something.
Horst