Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Bridge to nowhere

San Gabriel Mountains, CA

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It was a pleasant day when we started with the hike. I was pretty excited too since the trail is right next to a river and we'd have to cross the river a few times to get to the bridge! I was surprised when we saw someone panning for gold in the river... Who would've thunk there's still gold in the river in this day and age??? We were not able to talk to the guy to ask him if he hit a jackpot yet! The photo on the right is I think the first crossing we did... Yeah, I was wondering too why the people on the right crossed at that spot (it looks a little deep for me... waist high!) when the spot on the left looks shallower... Maybe they wanted to get wet?

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Interestingly, the trail is not right next to the river the whole way... There was a little scrambling involved, nothing hard though. Along the way we found some wild black berries! Yup, we tried some of the berries and it was pretty good except there's not that many that was ripe... Hehe!

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Here's a few photos to give you an idea on how varied the views are along the trail.

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The views along the trail was just amazing! Finally, we saw a sign saying something about the bridge to nowhere! I don't think I saw a sign at the trailhead talking about the bridge to nowhere...
Lifted from wikipedia:
The Bridge to Nowhere is an arch bridge that was built in 1936 north of Azusa, California in the San Gabriel Mountains. It spans the East Fork of the San Gabriel River and was meant to be part of a road connecting the San Gabriel Valley with Wrightwood.

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After seeing the sign that we are now on private property, look at what greeted us... A ton of people waiting for their turn! Turn for what? Bungee jumping! I've got to hand it to these people waiting to bungee jump... To get to the site, you have to cross the river 5 or 6 times, for a total hike of 5 miles!!! There's no other way to get to the bridge... You'll have to hoof it. Just to be able to jump off a bridge! It was also really hot that day!!! (Our progress hiking in was really slooow because of the heat! That's what we get for not looking at the forecast before we went... hee-hee!)

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Can you see the bungee jumper on the bridge? Nope, not for me. Why would I want to pay just to jump off a bridge? Hehe!

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We went down to the river to soak in the water and cool off and of course to get a different view of the bungee jumpers! =D Believe it or not we were able to swim a little in this river!

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The spot where we swam was something like this... It was like an endless pool... We were going nowhere trying to swim. Hehe!

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We had a blast splashing around in the river we forgot about the time... So, we started heading back when we noticed the sun starting to set... It's an almost five mile hike out so no one complained why we have to go. Heehee! I for one do not like hiking in the dark!!!

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I had to take some more photos on our way out because it's so beautiful there!

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We are now back to where we parked our car, tired, but really happy with the hike! Oh yeah, and we noticed this weird tree that has things on it that looks like rice noodles! Hehe! Let me know if you know what this tree is!

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