JamulBlog

A pleasant evening in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park.  Late yesterday afternoon, Debbie and I drove up to one of our favorite wildlife watching spots: Stonewall Mine Road (see the “A” pin on the map at right) in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park.  We timed it perfectly, arriving there just 20 minutes or so ahead of sunset.  We saw about 25 deer, many of them quite close to the road and easy to view.  There was one particularly handsome stag, an intriguingly colored doe (dark gray toward her front, reddish-brown toward her rear), and a stunningly beautiful yearling, with a treacle-sweet face that could adorn a poster.  Oddly, we didn't see a single turkey (usually they're the dominant form of animal life here).  There was a falcon atop a small pine in one of the meadows, and several beautiful panoramas of autumnal high-altitude chaparral, dominated by the browns and pinks of dried seeds.  It was a lovely way to end our day...

Also cheering us: the presence of about ten car-loads of people doing exactly what we were doing – driving slowly along, stopping frequently, to watch the wildlife.  Most of the time we run into some annoying obliviot or two who seem to have no objective other than to drive that road as fast as they can go.  None of that this time; just a lot of nice people enjoying the same thing we were.  One couple coming the other way stopped alongside us to talk for a moment.  In a few minutes of conversation, we learned that they had just celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary, and have been visiting Stonewall Mine Road for a lot longer than we have.  We're hoping that we can reach their age (late 80s or early 90s) and still enjoy things like this...

Side note: for years now, there has been a small sign at the Stonewall Mine parking lot letting you know that you have to pay for the privilege of parking there and exploring the mine.  The current price for this privilege is $8.  It still infuriates me, after many years of this regime, to know the government wants to charge me for visiting something that (allegedly) belongs to us (the people of California, not the damned legislators in Sacramento)...