February 2, 2015 - Today's adventure was to take a short hike in the Box Springs Mountain Reserve, which isn't that far from Redlands. Box Springs Mountain is the highest peak in the Box Springs Mountains range, at 3,083 feet in elevation. The mountain is east of downtown Riverside and northwest of Moreno Valley, and serves as a partial border between the two large cities. The Reserve occupies 1,155 acres and is operated by Riverside County.
This is Mount Baldy in the background of the picture below.
This is downtown Riverside.
The communication towers are on the summit of Box Springs Mountain, however, the round trip hike is about 8 miles so we didn't attempt it.
This is looking northeast to Mount San Gorgonio, home of the Big Bear ski center.
There are quite a few private homes here and a lot of horse ranches.
With all of the rock formations here, some of them jump out at you, like this one that looks like an alligator on the rocks.
And this one that looks like a bird's head.
We had lunch at Napoli's after our hike. It's a very comfortable Italian restaurant in nearby Loma Linda. I had their "Linguini Vongole," which is linguini with clams, sautéed in olive oil and garlic with a white wine and fresh basil sauce. Judy had their Gnocchi with a gorgonzola sauce. As usual, their meals are very filling. It got very hot walking in the mountains today since it is 78° here on February 2nd.