Thirty Two Years Ago...

Debbie and I were married on this day in 1981 – 32 years ago.  Despite years of experience, she's still putting up with me :)

Today we celebrated in a very low-key way.  First we journeyed over our local back roads to Pine Valley, where we had a fish sandwich and fries at Frosty Burger (best fast food in the known universe).  The fries were absolutely perfect.  Then we drove up a Forest Service road that leads from just west of Pine Valley up to the Sunrise Highway north of Mt. Laguna.  The first part of this road is paved, but we turned off the pavement onto a 4WD road that stays downhill and west of the Mt. Laguna massif (which runs roughly north/south). 

There wasn't a lot of wildlife to see there today, though we did get a brief glimpse of a male Western tanager – just his back as he flew across the road below us.  We don't often come out this way in the summertime, as it's very hot and dry – and the wildflowers are long gone.  Except there was one wildflower there in abundance, a new one to me even after all these years (first photo below).  The mountain mahogany were prime, and very abundant.  And in one particular spot we ran across lots of a plant we don't know bearing red berries. 

Despite the lack of exciting scenery, it was still a very pleasant drive.  When we hit the Sunrise Highway, we looped back around to Cuyamaca Park and into the Stonewall Mine road, hoping for some deer – and we did see one.  Just one :)

Now we're back home, did the chores, and we're just chilling out for the rest of the day...

BTW, the photos below were all taken with a tiny little pocket camera: a Nikon CoolPix S4300.  I got this camera for my mom, and I'm learning how to use it – so that I can show her while I'm visiting next week.  It's been quite a few years since I've last used a pocket camera.  They've come a long, long way – both in capability and in ease of use.  Also, the automation is remarkably good.  I'm deliberately using only the full auto mode, as I'm pretty sure my mom will use only them.  I'm finding that the camera nearly always does exactly what I want it to do. 

The touch screen on the back allows a feature I've never used before, but have already fallen in love with: while you're viewing the scene you want to take a photo of, you can touch the part you want exposed correctly and focused on – and the camera just does it.  For example, you might compose a photo with someone's face in the lower left corner, and a distant scene in the rest of the frame.  By simply touching the person's face on the screen, you're telling the camera to focus there, adjust the exposure to suit the face's illumination, and take the photo.  One touch does all that.  Nice!

The mystery flower that we've never seen before because we don't venture onto Mt. Laguna in the summer.  The flowers are about dime-sized.

Mountain mahogany seeds.

Close up of the mountain mahogany seeds (zoomed to telephoto, shooting from about 3 feet away).

The obligatory FJ shot!

Mystery berries...

A Morning Walk...

Debbie and I have been regularly walking up the hill alongside our home, almost always early in the morning (so it's not too hot).  It's great physical therapy for her, still recovering from her broken knee.  The chaparral can be very beautiful, and this morning's walk provided a couple examples.

But before we started this morning's walk, I caught our old girl (Lea) asleep on the couch.  At the ancient age of 16 (particularly old for a field spaniel), she spends most of her days in approximately this position.  It takes her a few minutes of movement before her joints work freely, and she doesn't play very often any more.  But every once in a while, she surprises us – as she did last night with me.  I had a Milk Bone for her, and when I held it up out of easy reach, up she went on her two hind legs, as if she was still a puppy!  I gave her an extra Milk Bone after that :)

This morning we took Mo'i along on our walk.  He's 14 – not far behind Lea – but still going strong.  He can easily make the 3 mile round trip walk with us...but by the time we get home, he's visibly dragging a bit.  It's easy to see how much he enjoys these walks.  This morning he was actually pulling me out the front gate, something he rarely does (he's always “lunking” alongside us as we walk, not straining at the leash like Miki or Race).

At left are the seeds of the mountain mahogany (a Cercocarpus, but which one I'm not certain).  Most of the year this is a scruffy looking chaparral shrub, notable mainly because the deer love to eat its leaves.  But for a few weeks in late spring, its hairy, fuzzy seeds put on a beautiful show, especially when back-lit.  This morning, as we looked to the east with the sun just over the horizon, we could see thousands of these mountain mahogany shrubs lit up in the valley below us and on the surrounding hillsides.

At right is the scarlet larkspur (Delphinium cardinale), a chaparral native that is particularly beautiful this year (we presume because of the early rains).  I counted 24 plants in bloom along a 1.5 mile stretch of road (they love road cuts and the edges of open, rocky areas), easily double the density I've ever seen before.

It was a very pleasant walk.

Libertia ixioides...

Via BPOD, of course:

Pelargonium tetragonum...

From BPOD, of course:

FJ Cruiser: Shakedown Cruise #2...

Sunday (Mother's Day) turned out to be too danged hot to do any work outside – so we decided to take the FJ Cruiser out for another shakedown ride.  This time we headed out to Los Pinos, the northernmost road that's in the Corral Canyon offroading area.  This is a few miles south of I-8 and a few miles east of Pine Valley, which means it's not very far from home.  There's a road there that starts just below the Los Pinos fire lookout (the photo at right was taken from near the start of this road, with Corte Madera visible just above and left of the FJ), heads down to the saddle between Corte Madera and Los Pinos, and then west down the ravine just south of Corte Madera (the photo below left was taken just at the start of the section down the ravine, with Corte Madera visible above the FJ).

In past years this has been a moderately rugged ride with just one or two challenging parts.  We were surprised once again – the entire section that runs down the ravine is challenging, with several very challenging parts.  All this is thanks to the rains this year and the consequent erosion; in some parts the road looks like it's lost 8" to 12" of soil, with big bad rocks left exposed.  So this turned out to be the best set of challenges yet for our little FJ Cruiser.

And challenge it we did!  We managed to sit it down on one skid or another at least a half dozen times, and twice we smacked a rock or two hard enough to make scratches and dents in the 1/4" GR-50 skid plates.  The photo at right was taken on the way back out, near the place the previous photo was taken – past all the challenging bits, just easy stuff left to go.  When I crawled under the FJ afterwards to see what we hurt, I found a couple of gouges and a nice big dent on the front suspension skid, a gouge on the rear differential skid, and a nice big scrape on the forward port-side lower link skid.  Any one of those, if we didn't have the skids, might have caused some very inconvenient damage.  With the skids, just a bit of touch-up paint is needed.  Big smiles from us for the skids!

The real test, though, was the handling.  We got to exercise, for real, many of the features of our little FJ Cruiser.  We stayed in low 4 wheel drive range for much of this trail, and I found the handling both uphill and downhill to be superb – secure footing, nice high clearances, easy and solid steering, totally controlled braking.  The FJ is a very competent offroad vehicle; considerably more agile than the LandCruiser we've been driving for the past 15 years (though also considerably smaller and less comfortable!).  At one point I needed to use the rear differential locker, and it just worked, nice and smooth.  We had the A-Trac system on most of the time, and we felt the brakes kicking in fairly frequently to keep one wheel or another from spinning.  All-in-all the FJ made it very easy to drive on quite a rugged road.  I'm calibrating my driving to the new ride, and my confidence in it is rising rapidly.  It's all good!

All the photos in this post were taken with my iPhone, including the panorama below, which I took from just below the Los Pinos fire lookout.  The iPhone makes taking a panorama ridiculously easy, and its software does a bang-up job of seamlessly stitching the whole thing together.  The result beats the pants off of any panorama software I've ever used.  I've labeled some points of interest on this roughly 180° panorama; if you know San Diego County these will mostly be familiar places to you.  As always, click to enlarge.

And of course there were flowers:

FJ Cruiser: Shakedown Cruise...

Yesterday morning I finished putting on the last of the skid plates (the four lower link skids).  The FJ's “armor” is complete!  And that meant it was time for a shakedown cruise to test all this stuff and work out any rattles, loose bolts, etc.

I decided to start out with a route we know well: entering near Banner, we made a loop of the Rodriguez Canyon road and Oriflamme Canyon road.  In past years, the Rodriguez Canyon road was by far the more rugged – but this year, extensive erosion on the lower reaches of Oriflamme Canyon road gives that route the edge.  No matter, the FJ took it all in stride with ease and equanimity.  We scraped a skid just twice, showing off the FJ's high clearance.  We had a chance to exercise crawl mode, the A-Trac positive traction system, the rear differential lock, and of course basic four wheel drive; all performed flawlessly. 

Today I get to crawl under the FJ and see what needs tightening, and maybe do a little touch-up painting.  Oh, what fun :)

Along the way we saw a few wildflowers, actually unexpected at this late date.  Some of these were quite beautiful.  The tiny little blue ones were my favorite; they covered the ground in a few places like a blue gas hugging the ground.  As always, click to enlarge.  BTW, these were taken with my iPhone – that's an amazingly nice camera for its size...

Limnanthes douglasii

Common name “poached egg plant” or “yellow and white Douglas' meadowfoam”.  Native to northern California and Oregon, and occasionally further south.  My dad and I saw this in Lassen National Park about six years ago, before the big fires there.  Via BPOD, of course...

Sprengelia propinqua...

Common name western swampheath, native to Tasmania.  Via BPOD, of course...

Crocus...

An outrageously gorgeous snow crocus, or Crocus tommasinianus.  From BPOD, of course:

Diaphananthe pellucida...

This African orchid via BPOD, of course...

Pholistoma auritum...

Aka “fiestaflower”, found in California.  From BPOD, of course.

Lupine...

Not my photo, and not a local species: this is from Columbia, Lupinus bogotensis, photo courtesy of Botany Photo of the Day...

African Orchids...

Via Botany Photo of the Day, of course...

A Holiday Trip...

Debbie and I did a little local four-wheeling today, on a road that was new to us.  This doesn't happen all that often in San Diego County, as we know our local roads fairly well – so this trip was a bit of an adventure for us...

One turn off Pamo Valley Road

Our starting point was toward the north end of Pamo Valley, just north of Ramona.  This valley's floor is occupied by the aptly named Pamo Valley Ranch, an unexpectedly large cattle ranch located surprisingly close to urban areas.  Once you're in the valley, you could easily imagine that you're in some remote part of central California, as you're surrounded by hills, and the landscape is classic California riparian: oak and pasture.  There's not a bit of urburbia or suburbia in sight.  The last public turn off of Pamo Valley Road is on Forest Service road 11S01, otherwise known as the Lusardi Truck Trail.  This “road” is a bit rough, probably too much so for an ordinary car, but easily handled by our LandCruiser.  The photo at right shows 11S01 just after turning off Pamo Valley Road.

Gore-gated again!

We were able to drive about 5.8 miles up the road.  The two side roads that actually went anywhere were gated off, and just before we left the National Forest, we were stopped by a “Gore gate” (so called because rumor has it that Al Gore's cousin in Tennessee got a lucrative contract for these things nationwide) on our road (at left).  It's frustrating to be stopped on public lands by these damned gates that started popping up about 10 years ago – it happens more and more these days.  But the trip we could make was very enjoyable.

Under the oaks...

That stretch of road alternates between lush oak-filled creek valleys (some still running, even in July) and wide-open dry chapparal hillsides with nice views.  Some of the creek valleys were wet enough to support willows, cottonwoods, and what looked like asparagus at a distance (poison oak kept us from getting close to these).  We also saw two beautiful fern-filled glens, alongside a flowing creek and still under the oaks.  There was a lot of bird life, including some cries that we couldn't identify; something new to us.

At one point, not far from the Pamo Valley side of this trip, we ran across a deposit of quartz chips.  We first noticed a bunch of white chips in the road, but then saw an area roughly 6' in diameter that was composed of nothing but these chips...

Since we had to turn around and go back to Pamo Valley (thanks, Al – NOT!), we took another road we knew: Black Mountain Truck Trail.  This leads out of Pamo Valley to its east, and winds up at Lake Sutherland, just north of Ramona.  This approach has you winding around a hill until suddenly you're looking at the downstream side of the large dam that formed Lake Sutherland – quite impressive, and the biggest dam I know of in San Diego County.  Here's a map showing our two routes today.

And of course there were flowers:

Cuyamaca in Bloom...

Debbie and I took a delightful trip today, up to Cuyamaca Mountain and environs.  Our first destination was the Descanso Junction Restaurant, where we had an excellent (and gigantic!) breakfast: country-fried steak and eggs with rye toast for me, and eggs Benedict with chipotle-flavored Hollandaise sauce for Debbie.  Then we went wildflower-hunting!

We first took Boulder Creek Road north up the west face of Cuyamaca, then cut over Tule Springs Road almost all the way to El Capitan Reservoir, then up Eagle Peak Road back to Boulder Creek Road, then up and over the pass on Engineer Road, and finally back toward home through Cuyamaca Rancho State Park.  Along the way we visited altitudes from 1,700' to 4,800' and a dozen or so micro-ecosystems.  This means we saw a huge variety of wildflowers, this being that time of year.  Photos of some of these are below. 

We also ran across something we've seen a few times before: butterflies eating the minerals left by evaporating water.  In this case, we were at the ford over Boulder Creek, along Boulder Creek road.

We had a wonderful time, and so did Race and Miki (they came with us)...