Yucca Bloom Forest

Today I went to Redbox, no, not the kiosk to rent dvds, but the trail high up in the mountains of the Los Angeles National Forest. (insert bad joke sound here. wah wah or ba dum pump)

We were yearning for nature, not the nature that puts you in a car on the pch during a beach holiday in which your one arm gets sunburnt as you inch slowly towards your goal. We wanted the nature on the other side of LA the one that was the anti-thesis of the carlocked beaches, we wanted the mountains, we wanted the desert. So we drove 20 minutes to the forest, and we hardly passed another car on the way. The Angeles Crest Highway winds its way straight up into the sky, through rock formations and atmosphere. You pass people on bikes with strong calf muscles inching their way through mountain passes. Those people hardly enjoyed the view, they were determined to keep going and hopefully not look down because it was a long way down, my white knuckling the passenger side handle going unnoticed.  I always have these thoughts of speeding through windy mountain roads and the brakes failing, those are the things I think about as I am griping something hard and stationary. Morbid thoughts of my mortality that sometimes prevent me from enjoying the view. I tried concentrating on the Yucca Booms covering the mountain sides, many the sizes of pine trees and I had never been that close to one.

We intended to go to Switzer Falls, but it seemed like everyone else wanted to go there too so after a 10 to 15 minute wait for a parking spot that would probably never come we headed on to Redbox, where surprisingly there wasn't a lot of people. Redbox is a  great hike, a lot of straight down, but not steep, winding trails that go a little up a little down, eventually leading to a stream. We passed tons of Yucca in full bloom within feet and inches from me and I feel now that I can finally check this off my list.  They are that beautiful in person.

There were giant thistles, corpses of burnt out trees from fires, bearded tongue, birds singing, the smell of leaves and flowers. We hardly passed a single person, but when we did they were extremely friendly.

It was exactly what we were looking for and the anti-thesis of what we knew would be waiting for us up the pch.

But what goes down must come up and the hike retracing our steps was a bit hard on the legs and lungs. .

We heard many lizards racing through the woods, loudly, I got a picture of this one, who was probably frightened from T scaring it my way so one of us could get a photo.

All in all the hike was two hours, slightly stretched out for breath and a reluctance to go back to the land of sound and bustle.

I would like to say that we all made it out alive, but we actually lost a TGT buddy on our way home. After a gallant effort and safe distance from the mountain passes, we did indeed lose our breaks, at a slow speed a SUV slowing our trajectory finally putting the nail in the coffin of Ts car.

Everyone is ok.