Did you know poison oak has no leaves in winter?

Our second hike was today.....I woke up and SF was beautiful...so I thought I would hike in shorts. If San Francisco was beautiful, Oakland had to be beautiful! Right??????

How much more wrong could I BE? I picked two folks that were driving with me and off we started. As we got closer to the freeway interchange we could see fog...very dense and damp looking fog. I was sure that as we started ascending up the mountain that the fog would be gone....I was wrong! It was getting more dense as we drove up! We finally arrived and I realized "Oh dear Lord, I am going to freeze today!" I got out of the car and immediately started jumping all over the place in order to stay warm!

Did it work?
Nope!
Did I look foolish?
Yep!
Did I care?
Nope!

After a quick role call and name game, we walked down the path, while we played another name game. Once we got to even ground we started stretching, watched a demo on proper poling and then we were all told that poison oak has no leaves in the winter and to watch out! GREAT! Just what I needed to hear...that I have a huge potential to get poison oak. It was everywhere around us where we were stretching....So my game plan was to stay in the middle of the trails and never touch a dog that had been wondering off a leash....a bit crazy, but I know how I get when I get mosquito bites and I sure as heck don't want to experience poison oak at our last hike!

Anyway, the hike started and I broke away from the pack with a few different people. We thought that we would take a different loop back to the car....and boy did we! It was a solid few miles uphill. It was strenuous, and my knee threatened to buckle on me several times (those of you that know me, know that I have a bad knee that I have to be careful of). I kept moving at a solid snail pace...but I made it to the top. It was a bit more difficult then I thought it would be, but I did it.

Today was our last team hike before being in the snow....let's just hope that it snows soon!