Two weeks ago my 10 year old daughter asked for a special treat – a one-on-one weekend with daddy to go on the B2B hike. The B2B hike is something I came up with when my dad died. I needed time alone for my grief and hiked from our home on the San Francisco Peninsula to the Pacific Ocean. This hike is now a family tradition that I undertake at least once a year to reflect, think about my parents, the values they instilled in me and all the things they did for me.
So now my 10 year old daughter wanted to go on the 60 mile B2B hike with me over a weekend. Yeah! To give us a little bit more flexibility, we decided to leave Friday evening right after work, instead of leaving Saturday morning. That way we didn’t need to do two 30 mile days in a row.
We began our hike at Bayland Park in Palo Alto where Hannah filled a vial with Bay water.
Right now the herons and egrets are nesting in the trees and their young ones make really interesting noises.
Our hike led us first through the City of Palo Alto and then Stanford University Campus. Stanford is also called “The Farm” from the times when it used to be a horse farm. As you can see there are still horses around.
Now we crossed from the more urban area into Arastradero Preserve, where we admired the full moon.
It gave us enough light to make it to Towle Camp in Foothills Park. Those first 13 miles on Friday after work were a lot of fun – and not only because we could just stop at Subway to get our dinner.
Saturday morning we got up early and continued through Foothills Park to Los Trancos Open Space Preserve where we had a great view back at the Bay.
From Los Trancos OSP we crossed into Monte Bello OSP where we saw a turkey.
Going through Upper Stevens Creek County Park and Saratoga Gap OSP we finally reached Castle Rock State Park, where we needed to cross a road at a parking lot with vista point. Knowing that Mr. Mustard sells hot dogs and soda in the parking lot on the weekends might have sped Hannah and we finished those 14 miles by noon. After a nice lunch we hiked through Castle Rock State Park and Big Basin Redwoods State Park to the Loving Parents Woodland Grove.
This is a spot that makes the B2B hike special for us. It gives us a place to reflect on our parents. My daughter and I had long conversations about her grandparents while we hiked. We ended the day after 30 miles in Big Basin Redwoods State Park.
Knowing that we had all day long for the remaining 17 miles we stopped even more for play than usual – like crawling through a Redwood 
or playing with a Newt 
.
Towards the end of our hike we visited several waterfalls
The Golden Cascades
Silver Fall
And Berry Creek Fall
Now we were close to the beach
Where we emptied the vial of Bay water into the Pacific Ocean
The rest of our family was playing at the beach, watching the wind surfers and everyone was as proud as Hannah herself when she showed the GPS
Here is a screenshot from the Garmin GPS.
We actually walked a quarter mile along the beach before we took the photo and screen shot to make it exactly 60 miles. Not that the mileage really matters. The real fun was in the time spent together. Now her 8 year old sister wants to bring the water back from the beach to the bay. Guess what I will be doing in two weeks …
