The whole day on one page: ride out, hike in, ride home. Illustrated route, not to scale; times approximate.
Some days start with a plan. The good ones start with a plan and an alarm. Mine went off at 6 AM on October 10, and before I'd even fully agreed to be awake, I was doing the two things every responsible adventurer does first: checking the weather and checking AllTrails. Coffee was calling, and so was the road.
Coffee in Drytown
Drytown, California, became our meeting point as two riders came in from different directions. Omar rolled in from the Sacramento side, and I came up from Lodi. There's something about meeting a friend for coffee when you both arrived on motorcycles. The day already feels like it's officially begun, and nobody has to pretend they're there for the coffee alone.
I was on my Honda Gold Wing, which is less a motorcycle and more a touring sofa with ambitions. Omar was on his Honda Rebel 300. Side by side, we looked like a living room and a sports car that agreed to go on a road trip together. It worked beautifully.
The Road Less Highway-ed
Here's where the day got its first real gift. Instead of taking Highway 88 straight toward Kirkwood, we took a rural forest road. If you ride, you know exactly why. Highways get you somewhere. Forest roads make you glad you're going somewhere. The road offered trees, quiet, and that easy rhythm where the bike, the road, and your thoughts all settle into the same lane.
We stopped for breakfast at Gibson Cafe, because a proper ride deserves a proper breakfast, and a proper hike deserves riders who aren't running on coffee fumes. Fueled up, we pointed the bikes toward Margaret Lake, just past Kirkwood.
Boots On: The Margaret Lake Trail
We parked the bikes and started hiking around noon. The plan was a 5-mile round trip. That's a satisfying distance: long enough to earn the view, short enough that nobody starts negotiating with the trail.
The first thing that struck me was the burned trees. Much of the trail had no canopy left, just tall, bare trunks standing against the sky. You'd think that would make the place feel bleak. It didn't. With no canopy, the sky was wide open, and it was the kind of deep, unbelievable blue you'd swear someone had turned up the saturation on. The burned forest and that blue sky together were strangely, quietly beautiful. It felt less like loss and more like a place in the middle of starting over.
Early on the trail: a sandy path through golden grass and fallen, burned logs, with a granite slope and standing snags ahead.
No canopy, no problem: burned trees, granite boulders and golden brush under a wide-open blue sky on the Margaret Lake trail.
A wooden plank step-up onto a big slab of granite, with cut log rounds stacked on either side.
Then there was the granite. Big granite rocks sat right in the middle of the trail, as if the mountain had decided the path needed some furniture. Weaving around and over them kept things interesting, and I’ll admit they made excellent excuses to pause and “admire the scenery.”
Granite everywhere you look, with one cloud drifting through a sky that refused to be anything but blue.
Cameras Up
This was a well-documented hike. Omar brought his drone and got shots from up high, the kind of view that makes the whole landscape make sense at once. I had my Insta360, and the footage came out perfect. Between the two of us, Margaret Lake was being covered from the air and the ground. If the trail had a press office, we'd have had full credentials.
Half an Hour at the Lake
When we reached Margaret Lake, we did the most important thing you can do at the end of a trail: we stopped. We took photos, of course, and then we just sat there for about half an hour. No rush, no next thing. Just the lake, the rock, the sky, and that tired, happy feeling of having walked yourself somewhere worth being.
Margaret Lake at last: still water, granite boulders and fallen logs reaching out into the lake.
Sitting by the water for a while: clear lake, fallen logs and granite cliffs under a blue sky.
A pine-framed peek at Margaret Lake and its granite boulders.
Then it was time to head back. We reached the bikes again somewhere around 3 to 3:30 PM, with legs that knew they'd done something and spirits that were somehow even higher than when we started.
Highway 88, Pine Grove, and Ice Cream
The ride home was on Highway 88, and it was a happy ride. The kind where you're smiling inside your helmet for no specific reason other than everything. Tired legs, a full camera, and a good friend riding along with you will do that.
We stopped in Pine Grove to stretch our legs, and in the interest of full honesty, also to get ice cream. I maintain that after a 5-mile hike, ice cream counts as recovery nutrition. I will not be taking questions on this.
We parted ways in Jackson. Omar headed home toward Sacramento, and I took 88, then 26, then 88 again back to Lodi. Alone on the bike for that last stretch, I kept replaying the day: the 6 AM alarm, coffee in Drytown, the forest road, the burned trees under that ridiculous blue sky, the granite, the drone, the lake.
That’s what Hike for Heal is about for me. Not just the miles on the trail or the miles on the road, but what happens to your head somewhere in between. On October 10, both kinds of miles did their job.
Five miles on foot, a day on two wheels, and an ice cream stop: October 10 had covered all the important ground.
See you on the next trail.