It has clearly been too long since I've written... not that we have not been out and about but just have not had time.  I did a bike ride this past Saturday up to the Water Pump off Tenaja and found this trail head... looked like a great hike... so for Memorial Day, we set off.

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Went out trying to find a trail / road to connect Rainbow and Temecula west of I-15... Google shows what seemed to be a good trail, so off we went to see what it looked like.  From the north end, we quickly got stopped by gates that banned entry to the Santa Margarity ecological preserve... humm... so we back tracked and made our way down to the edge of the Temecula Creek.  We parked the truck and  hiked down to the sound of running water...

From the south side of the trail, we made our way to a familiar baracde.  Another barrier blocking entrance to the Santa Margarita Eco preserve... dang!  We did happen along this cool looking rock.  It stood some 20 feet tall and had an amazing pattern in the rock.

"To be a cyclist is to be a student of pain....at cycling's core lies pain, hard and bitter as the pit inside a juicy peach. It doesn't matter if you're sprinting for an Olympic medal, a town sign, a trailhead, or the rest stop with the homemade brownies. If you never confront pain, you're missing the essence of the sport. Without pain, there's no adversity. Without adversity, no challenge. Without challenge, no improvement. No improvement, no sense of accomplishment and no deep-down joy. Might as well be playing Tiddly-Winks."
Scott Martin

Hiked Monserate Mountain today.  We left Temecula in nice sunshine looking forward to a nice sunny day on the trail.  After crossing Rainbow, we descended into a low hanging cloud that dropped visibility to about 1/2 mile!  As we continued to the trail head, the temperature continued to drop to the low 50's.  We had a good hike, but cloud cover blanked the mountain the entire time.  I guess the big draw for this hike a nice view once you summit 1567 foot high point on the mountain... but for us, all we saw was misty cloud cover racing up the side of the mountain and chilling us to the bone.

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The hike took us about 2 hours to complete the 3.8 mile round trip.