Ever since arriving in Southern California in December 2021 to take a two-month break from road tripping, I haven’t really been doing too much except for working and resting. This is probably evident by the fact that I haven’t published any travel-related blog posts apart from my Christmas trip to Palm Springs; it’s not that I’m getting lazy, it’s that I just haven’t been doing anything interesting.

I’m still exercising regularly and going for walks around Naples Island where the company headquarters is located, but apart from that, there isn’t really much to do around here. The traffic is horrible so it takes an exhausting amount of time to go anywhere, most tourist hotspots have admission ticket prices that are massively inflated and several times more expensive than what you’d expect elsewhere in the country, and I also haven’t really even felt that motivated to go out and be active.

With that being said, I wanted to make sure I didn’t end up in unhealthy dormancy in the team house until I continue my road trip, so I searched on AllTrails for some good hiking spots around Long Beach and found some nature preserves in Rancho Palos Verdes in the southwestern peninsula. Un­sur­prisingly, I had to drive about 40 minutes, but I figured it would be worth it because of the vast views of the Pacific Ocean from Rancho Palos Ver­des.

This wasn’t my first time in RPV; I was last there a few years ago when I was looking at properties for Tempo‘s PUBG team for the National PUBG League that took place in Manhattan Beach. We ended up getting a house in Redondo Beach, but Rancho Palos Verdes was one of several cities that we were considering. The most memorable part about this city was the fact that I encountered a random peacock just walking down the street at one point, and later Googled it and found out that RPV actually did have a wild peacock problem.

 
For my hike, I went to the Forrestal Nature Reserve where there was a free parking lot in front of the Ladera Linda Community Center. There were a few different trailheads to which I could have gone, but I picked this one because apparently the other trailheads have a much more complicated parking sit­u­a­tion where you have to reserve a spot on an app and pay $10.

From there, I hiked into the neighboring Portuguese Bend Reserve and immediately saw some nice views of the ocean juxtaposed alongside the homes within the Portuguese Bend Beach Club.

As I got deeper into the hiking trail, I transitioned to the next area, the Abalone Cove Shoreline Park and Reserve. This was my final destination, and the area that had the nicest and closest views of the ocean from this side of the peninsula. There are a lot of private neighborhoods on the Palos Verdes Pen­in­su­la, so part of this hike involved walking alongside motor vehicles on the public road Palos Verdes Drive atop dirt and rocks.

I eventually made it onto Sacred Cove View Trail, which connected onto Inspiration Point Trail. This led to Inspiration Point at the tip of the peninsula-of-a-peninsula, which provided nice views of Portuguese Point and the Terranea Resort to the west, and the Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles to the east.

Zooming in to the east gave a nice view of the neighborhood nestled inside Palos Verdes Drive to the south, Conqueror Drive to the east, Dauntless Drive to the north, and Klondike Canyon to the west. I wasn’t able to find a name to this neighborhood or subdivision, but it looked like it was mas­ter­planned because it had a nice tiered layout to the homes, sort of like what they’re doing in the luxury neighborhood MacDonald Highlands of Hen­der­son back at home in the Las Vegas Valley.

After taking in the sweeping, unobstructed views, I wanted to make my way down to the beach. The hike down was unexpectedly steep, and there were a few signs warning people of unstable cliffs. Staying close to the inside of the path away from the bluff, I slowly descended to the sand.

Far away, I saw someone staring out into the ocean for a long time. I thought it might be someone who’s going through a tough time, finding solace in the calming monotony of the crashing waves, staring out into the vastness of the ocean and realizing that maybe their problems aren’t that bad after all. If I was more extraverted, I might have even gone up to chat with them to show that there are people out there who care. Instead, I just snapped a photo.

I have incredibly poor eyesight. I nearly failed my vision exam when I renewed my driver’s license, and since then, my eyesight has gotten noticeably worse. Often, I will take pictures of things, then zoom in later to realize that the subject of my photograph is not what I thought. I zoomed into the a­fore­mentioned person… and realized that it wasn’t someone in distress. It was just a fisherman.

I continued walking out through the soft, gray sand and toward the rocks, which I noticed were different depending on how close they were to the ocean. The ones closer to shore were softer and smoother, while the ones further out were rougher and more jagged.

I wanted to see if I could find any signs of aquatic life, so I made my way out onto the rocks. I’m usually fairly coordinated with balance and bodily nav­i­gation, but today, I suffered from a cartoonish fall where I proceeded to slip on a smooth rock, lose my balance, try to use my other foot to catch my balance, slip even harder, hover in the air for a bit, and come crashing down onto my tailbone, right elbow, and left knuckles. If I listened carefully enough, I’m sure I would have heard a comical sound effect play in the background as well.

Miraculously, I landed mostly in the areas that had padding from my jacket, so that absorbed a lot of shock from the impact on the rocks. The epidermis on my right elbow got scraped clean off and my dermis started oozing blood, and my knuckles also got scratched up pretty badly, but I managed to keep my head upright during the fall and was able to get up fine. It was worth it, because I got to see crabs, urchin, what I think were oysters, and a few other sea creatures swimming around.

Usually, getting to your “reward” with the nice view is the hard part, then the trip back to the trailhead is easier, but it was the opposite for this hike—heading down to the ocean was a relatively easy descent, then hiking back up to the parking lot was moderately strenuous. According to my fitness track­er, I went up right around 90 floors’ worth of elevation during the hike.

I know that I just recently said that my hike at the Grand Canyon was my new favorite hike of all time, but it’s lost its title already. Yesterday, for the second half of the day I spent in Coachella Valley, I went to the Indian Canyons.

Admission usually costs US$12 per adult, but they ran a Christmas Day special of only US$10 per vehicle, so, needless to say, the line was extremely long to get in. Once I did finally make it in, the parking area was completely packed and it took me a little while to find a place to park. Even better, a vast ma­jor­ity of the people visiting were just regular people who were touring Palm Springs (as opposed to hikers).

I’m often cold at the beginning of hikes so I like to bundle up, but I warm up quickly and end up having a sweater to hold onto throughout my hike. For this hike, I decided to do a small loop off to the side to warm up before the “main event.” The small loop off to the side was the Andreas Canyon Trail, a one-mile trail that has regular dirt paths mixed in with some rocky areas. And thus, the hilarity ensued.

Remember how I said that most people were there as tourists instead of hikers? There were people literally in skirts, fancy shoes, and other non-hiking attire trying to walk this trail. The beginning was deceptively easy, but it soon became much more involved, and this is the trail where I’ve seen the most people turn back around and retreat after making it less than a quarter mile into the hike.

After the warm-up, I stopped by my truck at the parking lot again to drop off my sweater, then walked over to the main reason I came to Indian Can­yons, which was to hike the Murray Canyon Trail. This area was a lot less busy, which I assume is because there were warning signs about main­tain­ing health and safety throughout the hike, and because the first small segment of the hike wasn’t really that scenically appealing.

However, it quickly got a lot more interesting once I arrived in the actual canyon portion of the hike. I was originally greeted by a long parade of horses being ridden by a group of people, but once they passed by, I went down into the wetter part of the hike.

At first, it seemed like I could stay dry by hopping on protruding rocks, but I quickly realized that I’m eventually going to get pretty wet, so I stopped caring and just waded through the water. It seemed like the other hikers didn’t take that approach, though; this became a lot more apparent when there was a backup at one of the stream crossings when people had trouble making it across the stepping stones.

I eventually made it to what I thought was the top of the waterfall, and the spot where most people assumed was the end of the trail. There was a nice waterfall with a nice view down to where we just climbed.

However, I looked up the trail before hiking, and something felt off—I remembered that it was supposed to be a bit longer. Having been regularly fooled by false summits in the past, I looked around and saw an extremely steep and rocky area along the side of the waterfall that looked scalable. I wondered if there was anything beyond that, so I took a chance and started climbing up the rocks.

I’m glad I did, because this is where the best part of the hike started. The constant nice views that I had experienced throughout the hike so far got even better, and the stream of water got bigger, faster, and deeper. At this point, my shoes and socks were completely soaked, and at one point, I had stepped into water that reached up to my knees, so the bottom half of my pants were wet as well.

Eventually, I made it to the final stretch, which involved walking alongside the stream on top of slanted rocks.

Just around the corner from this final stretch was the end of the trail, and the final waterfall. This photograph absolutely does not do it justice—the sat­is­fac­tion of making it to the end of the trail where you witnessed so many people give up and turn around, and having done so by scaling rocks and bas­ically half-swimming through a creek, is pretty nice. That, along with the sound of crashing water accented by the chirping birds, and if it wasn’t so tricky to get here, this would be a great place to bring a lawn chair and read a book.

A lot of hikes have stunning, breathtaking summits with sweeping views, but are fairly boring until you get there. Murray Canyon isn’t like that—the journey is just as impressive as the end. When you do get to the end, the dynamic and technical difficulty of the hike makes you appreciate it more be­cause it feels like it’s something that you’ve truly earned. For these reasons, as well as due to my biased adoration of desert oases, this has become my new favorite hike of all time.

Immediately after completing this hike yesterday, I drove back to Los Angeles County to attend a Christmas gathering (which is also why I didn’t have time to post this until today). It’s unfortunate that I only got to spend one day in Coachella Valley, but I also didn’t expect to enjoy it this much.

Seeing as I’m going to be spending a few months or so in Southern California recharging from my six-month road trip, I plan on making a few more trips to Palm Springs, considering it’s a relatively nearby place to get away and go exploring for a bit.