Toulon Drive Loop

a.k.a. The Frog Hike (Murrieta, CA)

★★★☆☆

Blue sky with small, scattered clouds in lines like ripples, above a hill with mostly brown scrub, but some green bushes.A dirt trail curves past low scrub brush toward a hillside on a sunny day. In the distance a handful of trees and the tops of two large water tanks are visible.

In theory, this is a loop trail. It starts and ends as a dirt service road connected to a dead end, and runs along the top of a streambed for a while until it wraps around a chaparral-covered hill. Very little shade except right by the stream.

If you start going west from the trailhead, you can follow some nice side trails down to and across the stream. A great place to look for dragonflies and damselflies in late spring and summer. Presumably frogs in the right season.

Continuing west around to the other side of the hill, the the trail gets narrower and steeper, and I couldn’t even find where to continue once I got to the water tanks.

Eventually I’d like to go back and try going the other way around, which goes to the top of the hill first and then try to connect up where I stopped last time.

Looking out across a shallow valley at some houses. Some low scrub brushes in the foreground. Some of them are covered with orange vines that look like someone sprayed an entire can of silly string on them.Tree branches reaching across and shading a small stream with smaller green plants along the banks.Lots of plants - low scrub in flower in the foreground, then some rocks and a cactus, then a line of the tops of trees. A brown hillside and blue sky are visible in the distance.A narrow plank sits loosely across a small stream. Green plants line both banks. On the far side, a trail continues through the bushes.

All photos here are my own. You can find more in my Temecula Valley Nature gallery on Flickr.

View on OpenStreetMap.