Weekend Hiking - Brighton Lakes

I cannot believe that summer is nearly over.  Where in the world did it go?  We took advantage of the beautiful weather this weekend by hiking to Lake Catherine. This is Eric's new favorite hike.  We passed 3 beautiful lakes, spent plenty of time in nature, and more importantly spent time with each other.

The hike starts at Brighton and goes two miles to Lake Mary.  Along the way, there were plenty of gorgeous wildflowers and trees.  There was one tree that reminded Eric of the children's book "The Bernstein Bears and the Spooky Old Tree."  We were talking about our favorite children's books and decided maybe we would write some for our children someday.  When we were at Monterey earlier this year we were walking on the beach and there were cat prints on the beach.  (I still think they were actually from a really little dog, but Eric disagrees).  Either way, we started talking about what would happen if we took CC to the beach.  I'm sure she would HATE it because she hates being anywhere besides our apartment, but it's something fun to think about.  Maybe because she hates getting out so much is why we want to write about her having adventures.  We talked about books like CC The Beach Cat, CC goes to Disneyland, CC goes to New York, and CC goes on a hike.  Who knows if we will actually write these books, and even if we did they would just be for our kids, but it was definitely something fun we talked about. 



Dog Lake

Lake Mary was GORGEOUS.  We got there and climbed on top of a rock (Eric loves climbing on top of rocks) and ate trail mix.  It was fun.  Right, when we got to Lake Mary, the clouds rolled in and after about 15 minutes it started sprinkling.  It wasn't too bad and so we trekked on.  



Lake Mary 

Lake Martha is right by Lake Mary.  This lake wasn't as pretty so we didn't stop to take a break.  Lake Catherine is about a half-mile further.  We actually passed it once, but that was OK because Eric got to climb another rock, and then we went back to the Lake.  At this altitude, it was pretty chilly, and we were ready to get home because it was getting pretty late, so we didn't stay for very long.  

Lake Martha

Lake Catherine

We made it down the mountain in 40 minutes - it's always shocking how much faster you can get down a mountain than you can get up.  I guess when you have gravity helping it makes a HUGE difference.  I think this is definitely a hike we will do again in the future!