Oh my darling, Clementine

Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling, Clementine!
You are lost and gone forever
Dreadful sorry, Clementine...

Have you ever had a song stuck in your head? Well, I did today. I was planning on taking Hope hiking this weekend and when our original plans changed, I ended up taking her up to Auburn to check out a trail I wanted to check out a while ago but we just never made it up there, until today that is. And, can you guess the name of the trail? Yep, you got it, the Clementine Trail, that's why that song is stuck in my head. It was an almost 4 mile hike up and back; we climbed from the river at about 500 ft. to 1000+ ft. where we stopped and had to turn around.  It was a pretty easy uphill hike and we had shade a good part of the way which was nice.  I'm glad we started out early because on the way back, the trail was much more crowded with hikers and mountain bikers.

We parked at the confluence (where the North and Middle Fork of the American River meet) and headed up the Clementine Trail which basically followed the North Fork of the river. For the most part, the trail was nice and wide, which made me happy because there was less chance of those nasty ticks attaching themselves to Hope! We even found a geocache that was hidden off the trail, icing on the cake!

We passed underneath the Foresthill Bridge, holy cow that bridge is way up there! As we were walking underneath it, I kept thinking to myself that it would really suck to be on that bridge if there were ever an earthquake, you wouldn't have a chance of surviving!  

After passing the bridge, Hope and I climbed down a little side trail to an area known as "Clark's Pool", apparently this is a popular swimming hole. It was weird because as fast as the river was moving in most places, in this area the water was very still, making it a perfect swimming hole. You could tell that the water was very deep here. I found Hope a nice big stick and she swam for about 10-15 minutes or so and we had the place to ourselves! That's the Foresthill Bridge in the background.

After continuing down the trail to the end, we started hiking towards Clementine Lake. However, halfway down the road about a 1/4 mile from the Lake, we were stopped by some State Park Rangers. They told me that dogs weren't allowed at the lake and that I would have to turn around. Bummer, I had hiked this trail because I also wanted to check out the dam at the Lake; I could barely see it, but that was the only view we'd get of it today unfortunately. Oh well, it was still a nice hike and Hope got to go for a swim, so she was a happy girl...

The dirty feet of a tired hiking/swimming/geocaching dog... 

It was a great day....