Tidbits of Minutiae Written at Breakneck Speed

While waiting for Wednesday's hike to begin, I mentioned that ticks seemed non-existent this year. Faye piped up that when she came in from gardening last week she discovered one of the tiny deer ticks on her. David came up to Emily before the hike to ask about if pliers and wire were needed to cut and repair the fence and said he had some; but Emily, wise girl that she is, figured that any fence could be handily scaled. Leon had started ahead of the group because he's very slow and he waited at the fence for us. His arms are like thin sticks. There were 22 paying customers and 24 people total. Two were planning to turn around ( and did well before the Big Ditch) to drive two more cars up to the Valle Grande trailhead to shuttle hikers back down. One of the paying customers also turned around. There was a couple - maybe the Quinns - that had lived in White Rock but now are living in Hong Kong and will be in the area until sometime in August. We started hiking sometime after 9am and got back to the Valle Grande trailhead a little before 4pm. Leon ran out of water a near the bottom of the Valle Grande trailhead and someone shared with him. On the way up to the cars, Renate begged for some plain water because all she had left was water that she had mixed with some evil sports drink that she said made her sick to her stomach. I gave my email address to Annette to hopefully be put on the list of people that receive info on where the WI go each week. Ginny sends the emails out but she seemed unenthused about adding another email. The group tended to shelter in the shade of conifers while they were traversing the inner sanctum of the Valle Grande. There's a lot of Jacob's Ladder growing in Valle Canyon. In the caldera, we could see elk in the distance to the west. Annette has done some trespassing up into Valle Canyon. Also once she and some others walked up to Cerro Grande from along the fence line beginning in Valle Canyon. Leon commented wistfully that he had forgotten how beautiful Valle Canyon was. That's all the minutiae I can think of right now.