Hey, my secret santa this year gifted me something that I did not think of. It's not the hiking backpack, but the hiking book guide!

I haven't picked up a physical book in a while; who does when everyone is on their phones looking at stuff, reading everything online, and everything in PDF/ePUB? I expressed my woes of finding hiking trails in Southern California. Looking for this information online was a mixture of information overload and somewhat limiting. This guidebook is great! Well organized, easy to see the difficulty rating and how "good" the trail might be, and helpful directions to the trailhead. Looking briefly through the region where I live, I've already picked up a few hopefully cool hiking trails I will try to do. It's winter time so maybe it'll have to wait until early spring to do so. I'll have to find out online if it's safe. I know, it's California, I don't know what cold is (I've lived in Wisconsin for one year), but 40s in the morning is a bit chilly, no?

And thank you for gifting a hiking backpack! The large size will come in handy and allow me to pack everything into one easy to carry backpack. I'm a small guy, so I won't be able to lug 55L of content over a long distance, but it'll definitely be helpful for camping, too!