Santa Rosa Plateau

Tim and I joined the San Diego Trail Tramps on Sunday for a 7-mile loop hike at the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve, an area in southern Riverside County featuring wide grassy meadows and hills, clumps of old oak trees and vernal pools.

Most of the pics in this post were taken by my friend Stephan. You can pick out my photos because they were taken with my iPhone using a new landscaping app called Pano.
The Nature Conservancy owns the reserve, which is located a few miles outside Temecula ("A" on the map).

The plateau is the remnant of a lava flow that flooded a valley 8 million years ago. Over time, the surrounding hills wore away, leaving the harder basalt rock standing 2,000 feet above the surrounding landscape.
We stopped for lunch outside an old adobe house that was built in the mid-1800s, making it the oldest structure in Riverside County. Click on any pic for a larger view.Me taking a group pic in front of the house.This is one of the larger vernal pools that fill with rain water in the winter but quickly dry out in the spring.The pools provide a rich habitat for a variety of aquatic animals, including fairy shrimp that go into hibernation during dry periods.
A 360-degree of the vernal pool taken with Pano from the circular boardwalk.The reserve offers a rare glimpse of what much of SoCal's inland area looked like 100 years ago before subdivisions, freeways and Walmarts.

Myers Valley hike

After spending Saturday night in the Desert View Tower with the San Diego Trail Tramps, we headed 1,000 feet down to Myers Valley where we hiked around some cool rock formations like this one.
Tim checked out the remains of a stone hut that we found about half way along our route. One of the guys in the group said the hut was used in the 1920s by workers who built the old highway that runs through the area.
The desert lupines were in full bloom.

Early on in the hike we walked through this giant culvert running under Interstate 8.
We stopped for lunch under one of the palm clusters that are fed by a natural spring.

Heavy metal

We spent part of the weekend roaming the high desert around Borrego Springs looking for these hulking metal sculptures of ancient animals from the Pliocene epoch when the area was covered by forests.

The pieces are located on land that is part of Galleta Meadows Estates. They're all made by sculptor Ricardo Breceda of Perris, Ca.
We found nearly 20 pieces, including this mammoth. Click on any pic to make view it bigger.
A horse and saber tooth tiger have an . . . um . . . awkward encounter.
Tim gets introduced to a saber tooth the old fashion way.
Me with a gomphothere.

Alcoholic Pass hike

We headed to the Anza-Borrego desert below the snowy peak of Mount Laguna on Sunday to hike to Alcoholic Pass (D on the map below) at the mouth of Coyote Canyon just north of the town of Borrego Springs (C).

The switchback trail took us through a steep grove of ocotillos, the lanky desert plants that turn from brown sticks to lush flowering bushes this time of the year during the winter rainy season.


At the top of the trail we signed a visitor's log tucked inside a wooden box and found this rock pile marking the spot where hikers can look down both sides of the ridge.

Weekend hike

I joined the San Diego Trail Tramps on Saturday for the group's first hike of the year. This one took us the Mountain Palm Springs area of the Anza Borrego Desert State Park.

Scenes like the one above looked as though they had jumped off a plein air canvas.
The hike area was about 1.5 hours east of San Diego.
Here's Tim and some of the other guys descending to one of the five palm oases that we visited.

The ocotillos were in full greenery and almost ready to bloom thanks to the storms that saturated most of Southern California last month.

Group pic.

Sunday hike

I've lost about 15 pounds dieting over the last two months and I'm determined to keep them off - at least until September when I visit Louisiana and gorge on fried seafood.
I also want to explore more of San Diego County on foot. That's why I'm starting to do a weekly weekend hike.

My first happened this morning when I headed to the top of Cowles Mountain, the highest point in San Diego on the east side of the city. Click on the map for a larger version.
This was the view from the peak looking west toward downtown and the Pacific Ocean. A thick marine layer hid much of the distant scenery.
I made the climb with Tom, an old friend from New Orleans who moved out here years ago. The route was pretty easy to cover, and it took about 30 minutes each way.