Two Hikes In One Day

This morning Hiker and I went for two hikes with my friend Linda. Linda had found some trails over in the Rocky Peak area of Simi Valley, CA and wanted us to see them. The first trail we hiked was The Hummingbird Trail.

As we started off along the trail, we came upon these strange spider webs that covered the ground all around us. I remembered my brother telling me about these kinds of webs so I Googled this and found that these are made by Funnelweb Spiders. I can see how these spiders got their name.

This trail was pretty rugged and steep in some areas, but when we reached the ridge, it gave us some great views of the Simi Valley and the fog rolling in from the Pacific Ocean. Here you see Linda and how rugged the area is, next you see the views.

Here we are on the ridge.

To get to The Hummingbird Trail, we took SR 14 south from Canyon Country and switched over to Interstate 5 South. Then we took the 405 Freeway South until we came to the Simi Valley (Ronald Reagan) Freeway 118 where we headed West. We left the freeway at the Kuehner Drive off-ramp and turned right. Drove about 2 or 3 blocks and parked in the clearing alongside the road. There are signs on the fence that point toward the trail head.

We hiked about 2 miles on The Hummingbird Trail then decided to drive under the freeway down Kuehner Drive and go to Corriganville Movie Ranch Park where we hiked another 2 miles around the historic site. Here is a link that will take you to a PDF file of a brochure of Corriganville Movie Ranch Park.

http://www.rsrpd.org/park/corrignavilleparkandtrail/twocorriganvillebrochures.pdf

This historic movie ranch was where they filmed many western movies and TV shows in the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's. Plus they filmed "Tarzan" movies here and the TV show "Robin Hood" here.

The following photo is of "Stagecoach Road" where many westerns were filmed. Many stagecoaches, wagons and horses came down this road during filming.

There are many signs like this one along the loop trail that explain what movies were filmed in different locations around the park.

Here is a map of the areas were were hiking today.

Morning Hike To The Towsley Narrows

This morning I wanted to take my dog Hiker out for a walk. Originally I was going to take her over to Placerita Canyon to hike but got to thinking how muddy the trail would be from out last rain storm. Most of the trail is in the shadows of the canyon walls so it stays wet and muddy longer, plus we'd have to cross the stream several times and Hiker would have gotten muddy doing that. So I decided to take her to Towsley Canyon again because the trail there is mostly out in the open and in the sun. As usual the parking lot was full. We started up the road toward the trail that leads to The Narrows. As you can see it was a beautiful morning.

I noticed Hiker was limping so I checked out her paws and there was s sticker in one of her front paws. That was the first time she's gotten a sticker but once I took it out, she was fine. So we headed farther up the trail.

There was some water in the stream this time, not like the last time when we hiked here and it was pretty dry. When we've had a really wet winter, this canyon is covered with wildflowers, but so far this year I have only seen a couple of Blue Lupine bushes.

We hiked into The Narrows where we stopped to rest for a little while and enjoyed the sound of the water rushing over the rocks.

Then we headed back on down the trail. We did a total of 3.55 miles this morning. Good hike.

Great Hike On A Spring Morning - Pico Canyon

This morning, my dog Hiker and I joined our friend Linda to take a hike in Pico Canyon.

Pico Canyon is very historic as the California oil industry had it's start in this canyon right here in the Santa Clarita Valley. The first commercial oil well was located in this canyon. It was designated as Well #4. Below is the capped off well as it looks today.

We were surprised at how green things were in the canyon since we have not had much rain, but it was beautiful and we really enjoyed this hike.

We stopped by a historic oil rig to take a few photos. We are so glad that the city has decided to preserve all of this historic equipment.