Thats what I told my wife and the Munchkins when we began our hike to DCHS yesterday. I wanted to check out a canyon that went from the area where I parked down toward the Deep Creek Canyon. I had seen it on other hikes but had not hiked through it before. It was easy going for a long ways. Finally this canyon came to a point where it descended steeply down to Deep Creek. At this point there was an old Deer Trail that I had hiked before in the past that goes across the face of a steep hill. I could see that the burning of the vegetation on the hillsides from the Willow Fire had turned that steep hillside into mostly a steep sandy slide area and the Deer Trail was barely visible. Following this Deer Trail was our best option at that point. It was quite slippery but the Munckins got across this tuff section without sliding down the hill :-) After crossing that steep sandy area the trail comes to a ridge which descends quickly down to Deep Creek to another area I had been wanting to check out for a while. We slipped and slided our way down the ridge which eventually brought us back into the last portion of the canyon that we had been hiking in before, just where it runs into Deep Creek. It was full of Sycamores and the freshly fallen leaves in that small canyon where almost knee high in spots. I have a slight alergy to Sycamores and tromping through all those leaves got me sneezing. When we reached the creek we worked our way through some thick foliage down stream and finally found a good place to cross. The spot we were at was a large bend in the stream with lots of granite and polished boulders. There were also some clean white sandy spots and we decided to take a break on one of them for a bit. The Munchkins and my wife rested and enjoyed the Autum sun while I did a little more exploring in the immediate area. There were a couple very large pools in the creek which would be good swimming spots in the summer. The Munchkins did real well hiking in the ruff terrain we had gone through without any complaints, I was impressed :-) The next time I suggest to my wife " Lets do a little exploring " I may have a tuffer time selling her on my proposal, next time around :-) After we rested by the stream we hiked up a short ridge to the PCT and hiked it to DCHS. When we got there I looked around for any familiar faces. Did see a couple of people I had seen before but they were not people I know by name. We got a nice spot way up on the sandy hill north of the Arizona pool. The Munchkins and my wife got thier suits on and we all headed down for a soak. The Womb was pretty full so we decided to do our soaking in the empty Serenity pool. We spent a couple of hours there just relaxing and I started talking to a man named Scott who had come to the springs with his son Matt. Scott said he checks in here at the DCHS forum every couple of weeks or so and was familiar with all the recent topics we have discussed. He first started coming to DCHS back in March of this year. We had a nice, long conversation while standing and soaking around the main hotpools. His child and ours had fun playing in the mud and the warm waters. The level of the Lagoon out in the creek had fallen back down to close to summer levels since that last rainstorm. The wade across from the beach was about knee high. I saw an interesting little bird, about the size of a Dove. This bird was tan with a white head and black spots on the white part. It moved like a bird you see running at the Sea shore and was probably migrating through the area. It finally flew across from the beach and landed on the rocks in front of the Crab Cooker. It seemed pretty comfortable and relaxed given that we were all standing quite close to it. I tried to get a picture of it but it flew just before I snapped my shot, darn! One of those times when you just wished you would have done your picture a couple of seconds before :-) The sun was setting and we got our things together for the hike out. We crossed the rock crossing up stream with no problems. I always love the Sunsets Golden light on the hills this time of year. On the way out the Munchkins and I did our usual Coyote calls at a spot just north of where the two trails meet above Mo Fo hill. A day at those great springs just brings out the wild side in us :-) It was a real nice day and I'm already looking forward to my next trip, as usual :-)
