Solstice Canyon

Well, I'm not quite sure how this blog thing works, but here we go!

While looking at all the adventures Valerie (from church) does with her family that she has blogged about, I came across their trip to Solstice Canyon in Malibu. (http://www.caschumanns.blogspot.com/manns.blogspot.com/). It sounded like a fun hike, and if she could do it with four boys, two of which are younger than Elaina, then I should hopefully get my gimpy self to do it. After reading some reviews (http://www.yelp.com/biz/solstice-canyon-malibucanyon-malibu-malibu) about this interesting ruins, beautiful waterfall and easy trail, we decided we would go.

So this morning we headed out with Elaina who was excited to go to the forest to see a waterfall and animals. In our excitment we made the rookie mistake of leaving the trail map in the car. From previous read instructions, it seemed like it would be pretty simple, just follow the creek.

Well, the road split out of site of the creek, so we asked a lady which was the trail to the waterfall? She pointed to the trail on the right and said there were lots of flowers that way that Elaina would like...

She was right, but a ways in, the trail started getting harder and steeper, it didn't seem like it was discribed at all. The next person we asked along the trail confirmend that this waws the trail to the waterfall, but she thought there might be another trail that got there too. We decided to stick with this trail since it would get to were we wanted to go, plus is had some awsome views.

From then on the trail was all hills. Many "real hikers" passed us and everyone commented on what a great job Elaina was doing, including one lady who called her a little mountain goat.

We saw some cool stuff along the way like: just missing a snake crossing the trail, an animal print

burned trees

lots of lizards

a hawk

rock formations

and that little brown line way down there in the valley...yeah thats the trail we wanted to take : )

We stopped for lots of rests and a few times James carried her, but the true measure if what a special girl I have came when we were on the final down hill streatch made out of natural rock stairs. One of my irrational fears is going down stairs, but not holding on to something and the fear of the rocks coming lose made it worse. This wonderful girl of mine, seeing my fear, reached up and held my hand saying "It's okay Mommy, I'm here, I'll help you." I admit, I teared up with love.

(there are even more stairs up around the bend)

Eventually after a 'river' crossing

we made it to the waterfall, and took a break.

(The waterfall is a lot bigger than it looks in the picture, that is only a section of it)

We then took the easy road back to the parking lot. We saw some more cool stuff like: a burnt down house

a random bathtub filled with tadpoles

remeber that rock formation we saw from way above? Here it is from below.

Everytime we crossed a bridge, she had to throw in sticks or leaves like pooh bear.

All in all a wonderful adventure.