.jeri.

Welcome to the beginning of my new series of posts about trails! I hope I'll be regularly posting about the new places we find.

On Friday afternoon, my friends and I drove down to the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park. According to what I've found online, it's located at 18751 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach, CA 92651. We took the 5 South to the 133 South, and about 5-6 miles down (right before the 73) on the right side, we parked at the James and Rosemary Nix Nature Center parking lot. Parking costs $3 in quarters. There are lots of trails in the area, and ultimately we decided on this location because a) we found it, and b) we wanted to see a lake. I'll have to go back to check out the other trails in the area some other time, and probably when I've grown stronger.

We decided on the Little Sycamore Canyon trail, which took us under the 133, which sounds pretty cool, by the way!

After getting turned around a couple times due to a confusing map and bad signage, we eventually found ourselves on the trail:

And we quickly found ourselves arriving at Barbara's Lake:

The trail continued easily for the duration, only going in a light uphill a few times. The sights are nice for the most part, except for the nearby power lines. Once at the top of the ridge, we were able to see our parking lot and how far we had climbed:

We took a break up top to bird watch, sing like fools, and to feed the baby in our party. When we started moving again, we grew unsure of whether we would be able to get back by continuing forward on the trail. The map made it look as if all of the trails connected with each other, but not all of them did. We had a scout run out to the top of a higher hill to see whether the trail would lead us back and we questioned some locals to find out that we would have been heading in the wrong direction by continuing on, so we doubled back a little way and took a different road down the hillside.

Little Sycamore was a fun time for us. It was easy on the two of us who have bad backs, it had wide and even trails (some clay dirt, some gravel), there weren't too many people there, and it accommodates visitors with dogs as well as cyclists. If a person is looking for a challenge, I'd probably look up the nearby trails (we saw a much steeper five-mile trail from our parking lot). It was fun to walk under the bridge, see the lake, and get a nice view from up top. The close proximity to power lines and neighborhoods made it feel a little more citified than I would like, and the maps were confusing, but I think when we were headed back to the car, we decided it ranked about a 6 on a scale of 10.