Thanksgiving in Southern Cali

Since Sommer and I are away from our families for the first holiday season since moving, we decided to have a non-traditional celebration. My friend Matt joined the two of us for a 16 mile hike to Sespe Hot Springs in the Los Padres Nat'l Forest. We planned to stretch the hike over 3 days and enjoy the hot springs for a while. The week prior was full of rain storms and it turns out that California back roads don't hold up in the rain very well. As you can see from our first picture, our Protege went off the road into an eroded ditch. After someone pulled us out, we made it a couple more miles down the rad but had to park at an impassible creek which would add 8 miles to our planned hike. When you add the additional 1.5 miles when we got lost, our overall hike was over 25 miles. The first day was 13.5 miles and the last couple hours was in the dark as we tried to navigate our way to Sespe.


To reach the hot springs we followed Johnston Ridge Trail which was a challenging hike on the way down the valley and on the steep climb out. In the last 4 miles we lost over 2100 ft in elevation. The reward at the end of the trail was great. Here is a picture of Sommer and I in the hot shower that rained out of the rock wall above. A lot of the usual pools hat washed out due to the rains and a previous fire.

We did have beautiful views as we reached the top of the valley where we made camp the second night. A perfect vantage to catch the rising sun. During the day the temps were around 70 and at night it dropped to the mid 30's. Not bad for the last week of November. We hope everyone is doing well during the holidays and know that we are thinking of you, even as we are out exploring the world....We hope you enjoy the pictures as well. Thanks Matt!