We saved the best for last for sure.  First of all, what made this hike so special is that we came up a day early and stayed at a sweet little cabin all of 5 minutes from the trailhead.  If anyone wants a recommendation for a cool little VRBO in the Angelus Oaks mountains fairly close to the trailhead let me know….I will hook you up!!
We checked out the road getting to the trailhead the day before and found that it was not in good condition, very rutty and lots of sharp rocks and boulders leading up to the to the parking lot.  it's only .2 miles from the frontage road where the fire station is so we elected to start our hike from there…..In the dark of course.  It's about 17 miles and we only had 12 hours of daylight so we got started at 5:30 am and finished around 6:30 pm.  When we got started it was about 3 miles of a good incline of switchbacks and it was also raining/misting on us for about the first hour.  We got up to Manzanita Flats and it was so incredibly beautiful and enjoyable to walk through.  This peak was a little challenging because it presents a couple of false peaks and after 8 freakin miles, you're just ready to get there already!!  As described in several hiking blogs, the last .20 miles are the hardest, of course, when you're the most tired LOL!!  But completely worth it.  The bummer was that the clouds were chasing us up the mountain so when we got to the top to see that incredible view it was not there due to the overcast skies.  We didn't see too much wildlife, mostly squirrels and little chipmunks.  I think that was the only disappointing part of the hike.  It was truly beautiful and when we had a view it was spectacular!  We brought burritos for lunch and that was our motivation to get to the top.  And our motivation to be done was a delicious lasagna dinner waiting for us at the finish.  We really had to book it down the mountain before sunset and that we did!  We literally saw only 8 people on the trail all day and 5 of them had camped over night and were coming back down.  I know we were the only ones that got to the summit that day…..I love Thursdays!!  That's almost having an entire mountain all to yourself.  We are glad to have done two six packs this year, Winter Arizona and now So Cal. again.  I can't wait for next year's challenge.