Still at Pinnacles

I love it here, and with several days left on our reservation, I’m hoping we might decide to stay longer.

Or not.

The whole idea of this excursion is to do exactly what we feel like, and we have very few actual plans and no real commitments. If the money holds out reasonably well, we’ll be traveling for something between two and four months

Our campground sits at 1,000 feet of elevation, and it’s cooler than I expected. Daytime temperatures of about sixty degrees are perfect, but nights it drops to freezing, and there has been ice on our things outside most mornings. It warms up slowly and cools down fast, so we’re dressing warm.

In fact, on a run into town today, we stopped at the Goodwill and bought sweatshirts. Mine’s a Nike, in honor of Tiger Woods. Cost me nine bucks.

Another aspect of the cooler temperatures is that we’re going through propane quickly. We had to take the trailer with us to town, and eleven gallons cost $45. We’ve started a more serious conservation effort. I mentioned the part of the money holding out.

We’re surrounded by the steep, oak covered hills of one of California’s central ranges, beautiful in themselves, and the actual pinnacles are a few miles up the road. We’ve only been up once so far for a short but challenging hike for us, a one-mile, 1,100-foot elevation gain to a great viewpoint.

I won’t say I could have knocked this out without effort when I was younger, only that it was a slow crawl for me now. One of my big objectives of this trip is physical conditioning, so I hope to combine a vigorous walk every day with more serious hikes a few times a week.

The wildlife here is abundant. A herd of deer numbering in the dozens makes its home in the campground, not that exciting for us since deer are also common in our yard at home. But Thursday we sighted our first condors flying over the ridge above our campground. Even from a distance, the size of these birds is apparent, and there was no confusing them with the more common turkey vultures. The campground has a viewing station with high-power telescopes, and if you can lock on to one in flight, it’s easy to follow it for long periods.

Very exciting. The condor’s survival is far from certain and it’s been a treat to be able to see them in part of their natural range.

We’ve seen lots of coyote scat and heard them at night. A few nights ago we built a campfire and were enjoying the evening with our JR terriers Bandit and Nick. Nick was very nervous and kept fixing on thingsthat go bump in the night. We thought he was just being paranoid, but when I scanned the perimeter with my flashlight, there were two Wileys circling in, and they weren’t quickly scared off when I threw a few rocks at them. We’ve seen several since then. Sometimes when we’re walking the dogs to go pee at night, Nick jumps sky high at something he smells and pulls hard on the leash to get away from it. We think it’s probably coyote piss marking the location of a new fast food franchise. They’re known to quickly grab and run with little dogs left unattended for any time, so we’re extra careful.

We also saw a bobcat in camp, and I got some pictures of it at about 100 meters. Later in the afternoon, it wandered much closer, obviously hunting mice or ground squirrels (of which we have seen none) and I slowly made my way over to it taking pictures and got to within about 30 feet. I would guess its weight at about thirty pounds.

(If you’ve never heard a bobcat cry, btw, it’s about the scariest sound in all of nature. You can hear samples with a Google search, but if it doesn’t send a primal chill up your spine, you haven’t got close to the real thing.)

Shortly after the bobcat, we also sighted three feral pigs, which for all purposes are pretty much wild boar. We had seen signs of their rooting, and Mary guessed what they were before we asked a ranger, and she (the ranger) confirmed they’re common around the campground. She said that within less than a year, a domestic pig will take on all the characteristics of a wild one: a lean frame and prominent shoulder hump, plus tusks. These pigs have been wild for generations.

They are an imposing presence, and we were glad they were a hundred meters or so away and moving the other direction. The ranger also said they are shot on sight as part of an effort to eradicate them from the park, which explains two shots we heard close in yesterday.

Still, good luck with that. Wild pigs breed like rats, and I don’t know of any successful efforts to remove them.

Because the oak trees have had an abundance of acorns this year, the bird population is very high. Common are jays and magpies, quail and, not surprisingly, the acorn woodpecker. Also lots of hawks, golden eagles, and the always comely turkey vultures.

I suppose you have to be here to appreciate all this, and I’m very glad we decided on a whim to make this our first stop. We’ve been the only campers here until two other RVs came in today, but they’ll be gone after the weekend and we’ll have the park to ourselves again, save for the hikers and climbers who drive up to the trailheads early in the morning and leave late.

The rest of the time, it’s just us and the chickens.