Reliving Marilyn's Last Hike

I hesitated to walk on this trail for fear that the memories would be bad. To somewhat counter this, I parked at Grey Whale Cove and walked the opposite direction cutting off for Old Pedro Mountain Road and Montara Mountain. This meant that I overlapped our last hike for a good piece but didn't duplicate it.

While I must confess to some tears, most of my memories were joyful. Marilyn really liked to be outdoors and particularly enjoyed the coast. The McNee Ranch trail up the hill from Highway 1 between Grey Whale Cove and Montara Beach was the perfect trail. After a short and somewhat steep rise it leveled out with spectacular views of the ocean and a couple beaches. This hike and that moment recaptured several of the joys we had in our life together. It's poor ending, with the wrong prescription compression garment and poor advice that she could go walking in the compression garment leading to what she described as a lymph explosion, a burning sensation in her upper thigh/groin, was also the end of her alternative Gerson Therapy. If any other therapy, including the Protocel we tried too late, could have worked, we didn't learn of it soon enough for it to work.

My retracing some of those steps brought more memories of our hikes and fun than memories of the consequences of that hike. She was a joy to be with and that trail was her kind of trail. It even had and has a couple of benches.

Today I found some picnic tables that neither of us knew about. It could very easily have been her favorite spot. I don't think she would have ever gone on the ten-mile round trip hike to the top of Montara Mountain, even before her first cancer.

Slowly I am hiking all the approaches to Montara Mountain. There is a trail from Grey Whale Cove that goes a little more directly up the ridge. I may have to try that one to see if it is shorter. Today's hiking took just over three hours and almost 20,000 steps. Even going up hill I tried to keep my step length its full calibrated length. I was relieved that the pedometer did count them because I know that they were slower.

I didn't refill my camelback and as a result ran out of water at the top. Thank goodness coming down is easier, when I don't slip too much or fall at all.

Even with the exercise, today has been a reduced diet day. I was going to fast with just fiber drinks to give a matrix for my supplements and vitamins to be digested properly but ended up having dinner. The dinner would have been much less caloric if I hadn't tacked on the two slices of homemade whole wheat sourdough bread but it all was good.

I think I'm finally getting on top of the poison oak infestation I've been suffering. It has taken Benadryl pill to do so but none of my patches itched on the hike I took today. Unfortunately, they still are red, which leaves me taking another pill yet tonight. I'd like to think that the "drowsy" formula would help me sleep but the drying of the anti-histamine counters it.