New trails
We avoid, when we can, repeating walks with Amber in order to give both her and us new experiences. Today we explored a very narrow, unmarked trail off the horse trail in our neighborhood. We wandered through the trees and brush and ultimately came upon what was questionably a public street. Eventually, we came to a street that we recognized as being in a community from which we moved eighteen years ago.
We followed that street to an open space leading to a briskly flowing creek. The area was vaguely familiar as we last visited it about twenty-five years ago. Amber eagerly found a crossing spot and rushed across, then waited for me. We decided that we wouldn’t continue in that direction because of the terrain and and uncertainty of public/private property. Our current house was very close to where we were but it would have been a rugged hike getting there.
We explored downstream along the creek and came to a “Private Property” sign so retreated to the street and went back home the way we came.
I looked on Poway’s website for both open space and a trail map of the trails in our area but didn’t see any but the one known to us. I then called the city staff to get information and the staff were most helpful. The parks maintenance supervisor was intimately knowledgeable about the area we hiked and we found out that much of what we thought was open space was undeveloped, unposted, private property. The narrow trail that we took initially was a public easement by the tract developers to Poway to allow the Poway High School students a way to continue to walk to school. Apparently, there are numerous such unmarked trails in the area, some maintained by the city, some not.
Amber seemed very happy with the much longer than usual walk and I’m sure she’s excitedly looking forward to the next walk.