Embracing What is | Monserate Mountain Hike Recap

Hiking is one of my favorite ways to clear my head, enjoy nature and practice mindfulness. I always consider it time well spent as I’m trekking up a mountain, feeling the breeze, and taking in the scenery, and every time I reach the peak, I do so with a grateful heart.

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However, just as with everything in life, sometimes hikes don’t go exactly as planned. This was the case last weekend, when I set out to try hiking a new trail: Monserate Mountain in the nearby town of Fallbrook.

Sometimes when hikes don’t go exactly as planned, it’s because I get lost while I’m actually hiking; other times I get lost trying to get to the trail itself. The latter was the case last Saturday.  

One of the challenges of finding new hikes is figuring out how to actually get there, since I find that addresses to trail heads aren’t specified a lot of the time – especially since I usually find out trail info via hiking forums. Oh, and I have no sense of direction either, so that never works to my advantage.

The website I was following specified that the trailhead can be accessed by parking on a street called Pankey Road, so I GPSed the road. First my iPhone kept malfunctioning and redirecting. Then when it finally worked, I wound up on a dirt road near a baseball field with mountains all around, but no trailhead in site. I drove all around looking for the right area and checked my map numerous times, all while my not so patient dog whined and paced in the backseat, demanding that the window be down for her on what was a chilly morning. Her high pitched whine was like nails on a chalkboard as I tried to figure out where I was going.

I eventually wound up having to stop in a random residential area to take Harley out for a walk so that she could go to the bathroom and get some of her energy out. Feeling kind of annoyed with both her and the trailhead that I hadn’t yet found, I decided to stop at a little mom & pop market (literally called Mom and Dad’s Market!) to scope it out and ask for directions.

Luckily the cashier pointed me in the right direction, and I wound up finding the trailhead with no other issues (woohoo!). It seems that I was a good 6 miles away from the trailhead the first time around.

To anyone reading this planning on hiking at Monserate Mountain, if you GPS Stewart Canyon Road, you’ll find yourself in the right place. It intersects with Pankey Road, but if you put that street into your GPS, you’ll probably wind up on a strange deserted dirt road like I did.

Once I made it to the trailhead, I was just feeling happy to finally be at the right place….and then it started raining. While this certainly wasn’t the end of the world, it made me laugh because I had checked the weather prior to going, and there was no chance of rain mentioned.

As I hiked this mountain with rain splashing in my face, I was reminded that sometimes you just have to accept things as they are and go with it on an unexpected rainy day – whether figuratively or literally.

Sometimes Mother Nature has her own plans, hiking websites don’t give accurate directions, iPhone maps get lost themselves, and my dingo is a super annoying passenger. Sometimes it just is what it is. And because hiking has a way of making you see the bigger picture in life, it also make me think about how sometimes you just have to accept people for who they are, which sometimes means supporting loved ones even if they make what you think are poor decisions.

The mountain is located off of a major highway (I-15), so I could hear traffic from the highway pretty much the whole time. The trails were more crowded than I usually like while hiking, but my hike with my adorable workout partner was still a nice morning in the end.

Monserate Mountain wound up being a good calorie burning hike. I didn’t head up the mountain and do the whole loop around trail as I had originally planned, but we did hike to the top, take in the views – I-15 traffic, misty clouds, and all – and make our way back down.

During the hike I had felt my bad mood melt off of me, and on the car ride home, I enjoyed peaceful silence as a certain someone snoozed without a peep.
Side note for dog owners: For Christmas my brother-in-law and his wife gave us a harness to use when we hike with Harley, and wow, what a difference it makes! I’m not sure why we never tried one before, but it really helps in keeping Harley from excitedly and annoyingly pulling on the leash during walks and hikes.

Questions: What was the last thing that didn’t go as planned for you? Dog owners, do you use a harness?