Love Hiking

A few months ago, we were having dinner with some friends and one of them thought of planning a Valentines Day Hike. Knowing that Valentines Day fell on a Saturday and the BF works on Saturdays, I accepted the invitation.


My BFF and I have actually spent every single Valentines Day together since 2007 so I invited her to keep up the tradition! We were very lucky that the weekend provided amazing weather! (it was pouring last weekend) We headed over to our rendezvous point and met up with 2 other couples, Bay and Patti LaBelle, a small yorkie, and another friend. Patti and Bubs never met each other and when she caught wind of a new dog, she lunged out at him like a growling torpedo as her introduction. I'm happy to say that Bubs was nice and didn't get mad at her for that. We were a 2 car caravan to Marin with Patti's dad leading us in his car while I drove mine. I had no idea where we were hiking and was told to just follow his car. We ended up taking a surprise scenic drive on Conzelman Drive in the Marin Headlands. Following the scenic drive, we headed further into Marin County and found that the exit to our trail was backed up. We stopped at a gas station and all decided to take the Rodeo Ave. trail.

We were able to take Bubs off of his leash and Bubs was complimented the entire day for his good behavior. (They had no idea that before we got home the day earlier, he had managed to jump into my shower, knocked over his 75% full bottle of dog shampoo, rolled around in it and spilled a lot of it on the toilet seat.)We started off leash and Patti kept running ahead and walking at the pace of strangers and Bay kept getting distracted and smelling stuff which left him far behind. Bubs stayed right with us.

smart boy! hiding in shadows to keep cool!

 We went off the main trail and climbed up some of the hills and Patti's dad warned us to check for ticks and I found one on Bubs back and flicked it off. Patti had a bunch on her face because of how low she was and Bay wasn't checked. We kept on and ended up at this great view.

Downtown SF can be seen if you look closely

 

we never did get a complete group photo but here are most of us

After we reached the top, we decided to turn around instead of heading down the other side of the mountain. We walked back on the main trail which ended up being longer than the small trail we took to get there. We ended up doing 5 miles which was great!

After the hike we did another final tick check before getting into the cars and Patti had a lot more on her face, Bay had a few burrowing into his ears, and Bubs had 2 more on his feet. I tried to get a group photo of the dogs, but never managed to get all of them to look at the same time.

 

Take 1 Bubs

Take 2 Patti

Take 3 Bay