A couple of weeks ago we hiked Annie’s Canyon Trail and passed by this beautiful osprey hanging out in a dead tree (which my SE Lagoon Conservancy volunteer friend told me was called a “snag”). Interestingly, other names for osprey include fish eagle, sea hawk, river hawk, and fish hawk.
Hole in the Wall is a small gap in a natural wall of rock some four hundred feet high. It is located 3.7 miles up a sandy wash/road that takes off of Highway 190 close to Zabriskie Point and Twenty Mule Team Canyon.
The Converse Basin Grove in Sequoia National Forest was extensively logged in the late 1800’s and many of the stumps are still intact. The oldest sequoia stump in this area is just over 3,200 years old!
Links: Sequoia National Forest
Twenty Mule Team Canyon is an unpaved 2.7 mile, one-way loop drive in Death Valley National Park located off Highway 190 just east of Furnace Creek. This badlands area is quite spectacular in color and texture.
Links: NPS previous related post
This pic looks back down the roadway leading up to the top of Palomar Mountain. Camping is available at Doane Valley and Cedar Grove campgrounds in Palomar Mountain State Park and at the Palomar Observatory campground. Some of the great hiking trails on the mountain boast views of the Pacific Ocean.
Set at 4,400 feet of elevation, Jumbo Rocks Campground in Joshua Tree National Park offers 124 campsites with outstanding views!
This pic shows a so-called “granary” tree on which every crevice has been filled with acorns for later retrieval as a tasty dinner. The industrious storekeeper responsible for this phenomenon is the Acorn Woodpecker. The largest recorded number of acorns stored in this manner in one tree numbered 50,000. This tree was in the Palomar Observatory parking lot.
This monument, designed by local artist Archibald Garner, was built in 1934 by the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) in an effort to employ workers during the Great Depression. The six astronomers depicted include Hipparchus, Nicolas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Issac Newton, and John Herschel.
Marion Mountain (10,362 ft) is often climbed in conjunction with Jean Peak (10,670 ft) and San Jacinto Peak (10, 834 ft). Both Marion Mountain and Jean Peak were reportedly named by a US Geological Survey topographer named Edmund Taylor Perkins, after Marion Kelly who worked for the Indian Bureau at the Morongo Valley Reservation and Jean Waters (whom he later wed).
This pic shows the beautiful desert view looking north from the 17 Palms Oasis in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.
Links: previous related post
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