nancy and i hiked east molera trail today in andrew molera state park. the main bulk of the park runs from highway 1 west towards the ocean, and it’s really beautiful. however i think the east trail that starts on the mountain side of highway one is the best. it starts out in a wide open field and then climbs steeply up the hillside. at the top you reach a grove of redwood trees nestled together. if you look at the google map images above, the first is more an overview of the whole park, on the second you can actually see the trail from the image winding up the mountain. the group of redwoods i’m talking about is dirctly below where it says andrew molera state park. from there the trail skims the ridge line and continues to climb and climb. and the views get better and better as you go. looking east you can see pico blanco looming with cloubs getting caught on its peak. we ran into roman along this hike, he used to work at the dive shop. small world isn’t it? he was kinda upset because right when he caught up to us we had just scared a group of five deer away. i didn’t have a long lens to capture them and they were standing in the path so i didn’t see any reason to sit and wait. oh well, sorry roman!
we hiked with roman for a while and i had to stop every five seconds to take pictures. i played hell keeping up having to jog double time to always catch up. this just about killed me. roman also hiked about double our speed and just about killed nancy and i both. hahaha. we had to part ways before we hit the peak as we had an appointment and had to start our descent. i wish we would have had time to make it to the top!
this trail is also one of my absolute favorites. once you pass the little grove of redwoods it just feels more and more magical. you get that sense of seeing the curve of the world and the barren grass fields mixed with patches of trees and mountains like pico blanco in the background make it spectacular. get yourself out on this trail if you make it to big sur. in the end we did somewhere around 8+ miles and 2000+ feet of elevation. it kicked my butt of course… 
but i trimmed down my camera bag this time so i didn’t die. i also was smart and wore my hiking boots.
