Capabilities

Hello Everyone, 

Andy Rooney did one of his commentaries on the similarities of dogs and their owners. It dealt with how dogs and their people often share similar personalities, to the point where they often even look alike. At the end of the piece, he got down on the floor, next to his bulldog, and to quote my dearly departed grandfather 'So help me God, you couldn't tell one from the other'. 

I like to think that Arthur and I are nearly as well matched. We're both on the large side of medium, athletic, and only sociable in the right context. But today it was the athleticism that came in handy. 

We started the day at Pismo beach, but left by mid morning. Our destination was the Deep Creek hot springs, which are on the other side of LA. If we didn't get a good start, we'd be stuck in rush hour traffic. Side note about athletic capability, to get off the beach required driving through the surf to avoid where a creek  had eroded a ravine into the beach. It looked intense but my athletic truck handled it with ease. The tide was coming in, so had we got stuck in that spot, we would have been in trouble. The water was already a foot deep where we drove.

Anyway, I wanted to check out the springs before sundown. But you can't just drive straight to them. There's a hike involved.

We got to the ranch/campground nearest the springs by 6. The hippy who runs the place gave me a hand drawn map and said it takes about 30 min. to get down to the springs, and an hour to get back up. Sunset is at 7:30. 

Challenge accepted. 

In my bones I knew that Arthur and I could chop that travel time down to where we could make it to the water, wade around for a bit, then march double time back up the canyon wall to the campground before it got dark. 

And that's exactly what we did. We flew down the path, waded across a cold water creek and into a pool of naturally heated water. It was great, though Arthur didn't try to hot water. Not his thing. 

We burned it back up the path, passing several people who had left much earlier. It was a great ending to a long travel day. 

Wes