mount madonna
::: {style="text-align: center;"}
:::
David & I spent the day hiking at Mount Madonna County Park based on the trail route recommended here. We arrived just before 9AM, and finished the 6 mile hike at about 12:30PM. The first 2 miles were really strenuous, climbing up hill non-stop all the way to the Huckleberry Group Camp with only two switchbacks. Its a good thing that it was still early in the day and relatively cool, as that portion of the hike was brutal. It was, however, quite pretty, in a moderately dense redwood forest. Once past the group camp, the trail leveled off a bit as we walked past the (noisy) campgrounds all the way to the park visitor center off of Pole Line Road. We stopped to check out the White Fallow Deer (a gift from William Randolph Hearst) who were rather chatty, and then stopped for lunch just a short walk from the Henry Miller house ruins. The remainder of the hike was almost exclusively downhill, passing a mixture of redwood & eucalyptus trees, and then with no tree cover at all for much of the Ridge Trail. The tree cover returned as we got closer to the Merry-Go-Round trail.