Happy Snails

After an early morning jaunt to a construction site to pick up some long coveted wood with my sweetie pie, we then drove through McD's for a couple of Egg McMuffins to take with us up to the top of the world for a panoramic Los Angeles breakfast. There are three ways to get to the overlook; 1) drive up to the visitor center's parking lot and it's a short trail to the overlook; 2) park at the bottom and take the meandering and gradually inclined 1 mile switchback trail; or 3) face the bazillion steps and march straight up the dang thing.After finding the gate leading up to the visitor center's parking lot locked up until 8:00 am (40 minutes nigh) we parked on the road at the bottom and headed straight on up those steps. And these are no 7 x 11s, they are 18" plus, which is a big step.

Once we got to the top (yeah, we made it to the top) we chatted with another early bird. One woman who scaled the hilltop ahead of us, in breathable cotton knit active wear, and a colorful print scarf around her head topped by a straw hat, carrying hand weights, headed back down after looping the hilltop trail, and did it all over again. I don't know how many laps she did but she made the climb several times while we were there. And she was no spring chicken.

What does all this have to do with happy snail? Well, we saw a lot of them perched everywhere along the trail on stalks of fennel and other flora, and well, they seemed happy to me.