Hike at Leona

To get to the Leona staging area, you turn off Keller onto Campus and then immediately right into the "Ridgemont at Skyline" parking lot. The staging area is at the back of the parking lot. Just down from the staging area is a small pond, a great place for a dog to splash around, although Maggie actually prefers streams, as larger bodies of water seem to make her nervous. Luckily for her, Leona Canyon Trail follows a small stream much of the way, and she had many opportunities to get wet and muddy. We also ran into a park ranger, who asked me if I knew the name of the trail, and two different dog walkers. The second dog walker had two dogs enthusiastic for a run around with Maggie for a good five minutes. Poison oak intruded on the trail relatively little. The trail itself, a dirt road, winds consistently upward until it ends at a parking lot of Merritt College. There we turned back and returned to the trailhead, a total of 2.6 miles.