Sunday stroll in Camp John Hay
As seen in the photo above, if you’re near the paintball battlefield on Camp John Hay, you’re near one end of the Eco-trail, a short, easy nature walk. I started walking the trail from the other end and emerged here.
I had ridden a jeepney from Tuding to downtown Baguio City, as usual, and after eating lunch in Vizco’s, as usual, I walked north on Session Road then partway around Military Cutoff Circle. Right of Panagbenga Park, I walked through a pedestrians-only gate into Camp John Hay. I walked up the nicely-paved, unused vehicle road to a sign that read “no pedestrians past this point,” then I turned right onto the nature path.
the first sign that one sees on that end of the trail
The sloping footpath on dirt, grass and pine needles was two feet to ten feet wide, passing between a golf course and Loakan Highway. Some of the path was sunny and dry. Much of the trail was shaded by trees, and the damp, reddish-brown dirt smelled like clay.
One of the first things that I encountered was a suspension bridge. I didn’t photograph it. It was nothing special.
All I could photograph was little blue flowers and yellow, daisy-like flowers that I’ve shown already on other pages and posts and unremarkable scenes like this:
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Despite two or three “no littering” signs, such as this one which had been defaced and knocked down by miscreants, plenty of trash could be seen. Hikers love to toss trash anywhere although Camp John Hay had placed sets of six waste cans in intervals of two hundred meters along the trail (and elsewhere in CJH). The bins are labeled for plastic, glass, paper, cans, food and other.
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I picked up this garbage and candy wrappers and soda bottle seen elsewhere, because Filipinos walking on the trail in both directions pretended that they didn’t see it.
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lousy photos, I know
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more trash near six recycling bins
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near an end of the trail, approaching Republic Paintball and Camp John Hay’s Sales and Marketing Office
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If you’re in the vicinity of Camp John Hay’s cluster of small restaurants including Hot Shots, Shakey’s, a coffee bar, and so on, look across the street. Looking left-to-right, there’s a diesel fuel tank, a decaying nipa hut, the ugly Sales and Marketing Office, a sculpted wood rocking horse suffering the weather, and Republic Paintball and cable slide/rappelling. Right of all that is a trailhead, as denoted by the sign pictured at the top of this page.
I walked from there past the Butterfly Sanctuary, various hotels and the Mile High mall then past Igorot House and Cantinetta restaurant (above) beside it to a Starbucks coffee house where Dominic sat on the porch drinking iced coffee. After conversation there, I walked through Camp John Hay, past Baguio Country Club, to Leonard Wood Road, then southeast and downhill to Tuding and home. So I got some exercise today between lunch and Holy Mass in Tuding.
