((The Usual Suspects)+1) adventure to Mt. Pinos

Car­ol, Mar­garet, Ralph, and Ashe (TUS) along with Vir­ginia spent the day on Mount Pinos find­ing flow­ers, chat­ting, lunch­ing, and hiking.

Vir­ginia and Ralph arrived at Ashe’s at 9:00 a.m. where we piled into the Vol­vo and drove down the hill to pick up Car­ol then on to Carpin­te­ria to get Mar­garet on board. We decid­ed to dri­ve south on Hwy. 101, in on Hwy. 126 to Inter­state 5, then up to the Mount Pinos exit. A short stop at a Sub­way for Ashe to grab a turkey sand­wich and tank up then it was on task, i.e. off chas­ing flowers.

We end­ed up at the 8,300 foot park­ing lot where we had a nice hike into an adjoin­ing mead­ow then stopped for a shared lunch before hik­ing on up to the 8,800′ sum­mit of the moun­tain with lots of botan­i­cal stops and vis­it­ing along the way.

Our return dri­ve was quite spec­tac­u­lar, through Lock­wood Val­ley to Hwy. 33 then down to the edge of Ojai before skirt­ing Lake Casitas on Hwy. 150 and on into Carpin­te­ria to drop Mar­garet off before head­ing to San­ta Bar­bara, arriv­ing home around 7:45 p.m.

To see a slide show of our won­der­ful day click on the image above.