California - a Land of Geologic Diversity


Residents of California are blessed with an abundance of places that can be explored on foot. The diverse nature of the parks and open spaces vary from the fern filled grottos and mystic redwood forests that are found along the coast from Santa Cruz north, to the arid desert regions found in Southern California, to the alpine terrain of the Sierra Mountains.

I have always loved casual hiking. By casual, I mean one that required only a small daypack at most, and could be completed in a day with plenty of time to spare. As I got older, I found myself doing it less and less often. Three years ago my doctor said that I needed to take my health more seriously. A complete lifestyle change was called for. Extensive reading soon convinced me that the best "magic pill" would be more exercise. What better form could there be but to embrace my old fondness for hiking. This I did and it helped me beyond my expectations.

I found many excellent books that have pointed me to marvelous hikes, but once on the trail, what seemed so clear in the book became confused in reality. This is not meant has a criticism of the books, but merely an observation of what I experienced. There have been times when it took me several attempts to find and complete what seemed a straight forward hike. I soon realized that a few pictures would have been worth pages of words in determining which of those many faint paths was the right one to take. It then occurred to me that there might be others who would also like to have a preview of these hiking trails. So, for all those who would like to experience my hikes before hand, or who cannot physical hike them but would enjoy to visually explore them, I created CyberHikes.

The goal of this little corner of the Web is to allow others to share my hiking experience and hopefully make it easier for those who might follow me into these lovely environs.