Flume Hike With My Sis!

So as I've mentioned, my sis lives in some gorgeous California mountains. I love her life up there. She lives in a great community surrounded by natural beauty. She's adventurous and goes on hikes all the time. She'll scout them out on her own and even go by herself. She's the most capable person I know. Anyway, I took advantage of being off during the week with my new job and dropped both girls off at daycare/school and met my sister in her neck of the woods for a 5 mile hike!

She had discovered this hike where you walk across a flume on a narrow walkway. I guess this flume carries water from the mountains to a local lake. I don't think it's designed for people to hike but it sure was a gorgeous and fun experience! I think the walkways are for workers or firefighters or some legit reason like that.

 Look how amazing this is!

This is what it sounded like during our hike. It was therapeutic.

 At times, you walk alongside the flume instead of on top of it.

 The views were amazing! Look how sad all the brown trees are though. Because of California's drought, there was a beetle that infested much of our forests. 

 You can see my sis far down the path below.

 There was a section of the path that had been burned. It reminded me of a scary enchanted forest in one of Morgan's books. Cool stuff. 

The only part of the hike that wasn't enjoyable was the fact that a large section of it had swarms of mosquitoes. I learned my lesson and will definitely wear mosquito repellent next time. It barely bothered my hard core sister though.

 We walked to this area where we climbed down a stairwell to sit on the above cement ledge and eat our snack while listening to the cascading water. I absolutely love nature and experiences like this. It just puts life in perspective for me. What's the point of being couped up in an office most of every day? THIS is life. I didn't want to waste it away in a cubicle that didn't even have natural light. I just couldn't do it anymore.

 We had to cut our hike short and only did 3 miles because we got a late start. I had forgotten that Charlotte's kindergarten registration was that morning so I had to go take care of that before heading up the mountain to meet my sis. I made it back in time to pick up the girls from school making it a truly great day!