The time is 8:52 Pacific.

I’m in Tapenga, CA. I’m sitting on the couch with my nightly hot chocolate in a tiny Airbnb. I’m on the front porch, overlooking the canyon. The air is still and the moon shines full and bright above me.

Today was a great day.

We woke up early and ate breakfast and did some morning reading.

Then we went straight to the hiking trail.

Jules found a trail called Skull Rock Loop. It’s a very popular trail so we knew it would be an easy loop in the morning. We got there early before the trail filled up. It was great.

Oh yeah … so Jules is pregnant with our second baby. SUPRISE!!

We got about a quarter mile into the hike when things took a turn for the worse. When Jules and I go hiking, we love finding hidden trails. So when we saw a sign called “Shadow Trail”, we decided to take the detour.

It was a disaster.

The trail was hardly a trail at all. There was a very low thick canopy that kept snagging on little man’s carrier. Jules was on her hands and knees, crawling over thorns and ducking to get Julian under the brush.

Eventually we got to a short but steep rock cliff. We took little man out of the carrier because of how dangerous it was, but we looked at it and decided the best thing to do was to turn around.

On the return trip down Shadow Trail, we kept little man out of the carrier and basically carried him like a football through this fucking jungle. It was super sketchy. Since we were going downhill, we had to be extra careful. We would pass little back and forth so we could hurdle these obstacles one at a time.

No one was hurt and it made for a fun experience.

After that, we walked the trail as usual. Little man was so exhausted from his trip on Shadow Trail that he zonked out.

All the good pictures are on Juliana’s phone, but it’s a very common trail so I will use pictures uploaded onto the All Trails app.

We walked past all these landmarks, so this is the exact experience we had.

Note* - All Trails owns all these images. I don’t own any of them.

The hike was a 4 mile loop. Factoring in Shadow Trail, we did 5.1 miles.

After that, we went and got smoothies from Café Mimosa. We got back to the AirBNB, ate lunch, and then I took a long nap.

I slept for almost two hours. I can’t remember the last time I took a nap like that. I woke up feeling great.

By that time, Juliana had to start getting ready for her wedding. She left around 3 o’clock so it’s been the little dude and hanging out all night, ripping up magazines and eating bananas.

For the last two hours, I’ve been sitting out on this front porch, enjoying the air and listening to the bugs.

It feels good. I’m grateful.

The Blank Page

I Had the Best Day Today