The skies were bright blue, with a few puffy white clouds and the forest greenery was showing as Carl Brannan led 23 hikers from our meeting spot on Stone Bottom road, down trail 481. We even had 3 new hikers. Most had “sprayed down” with some form of tick repellant” because the temps were “ripe” for ticks. We still, though, were in a dry spell of weather. The dry spell was fully evident with about any stream we crossed either dry or maybe a few dribbles of water. We headed to Upper and Lower Salt Peter cave and there we crossed Lusk Creek for the 1st time. It somehow, did have some flow, although a very few might have gotten a foot wet, slipping on the rocks as they crossed. We wound around, were “on top’ of the Natural Bridge, then ate lunch and took the group picture at the lower part of the Natural bridge as the backdrop. After lunch break, we headed out to Secret Canyon, and took a bit of a break there. We did see several small groups of equestrian riders during the day. We saw lots of older work done by horse groups along the trails..the “turnpikes”…logs laid along the trail, with gravel between the logs. All total, we hiked over 8 miles today. We saw very little trash, picked up what we did see and of course, took it out with us. 

Next weeks’ hike, on May 2nd, will be meeting at Bowman Bottoms road, with a good amount of the hike being “off trail”, with several stream crossings. 

Until then, “See ya’ll On the Trail”