Saturday was beautiful, so we headed south for Droop Mountain and Beartown State Parks.
Droop Mountain
Droop Mountain is the site of the last major Civil War battle in West Virginia.
I can really only handle a small amount of thinking about war and death and misery, so it was a short visit.
The view is gorgeous, though,
Confederate Graves
The museum is where I really started to get depressed.
Beartown
Location: Beartown State Park
Distance: 0.7 mile
Luckily, just down the road is Beartown State Park, which is a 0.7 mile boardwalk through some pretty fascinating rock formations.
The boardwalk is really nice.
This was a lovely walk.
Since the day was so beautiful, we decided to take a bike ride at Coopers Rock.
Because we haven’t biked since last summer, we just biked the main road and then walked out to the overlook.
It was a good choice.
Once again, we missed seeing the falls in the snow. I’d forgotten how much rain we’d had last week, so that wiped out any ice.
The snow was very wet, and difficult to walk in where it hadn’t been compressed down, so we cut our hike short when my ankle started to bother me.
It was still a gorgeous day, and we had a nice hike.
Park: Blackwater Falls
Trails: Pendelton Point Overlook, Pendelton Trace, Dobbin House
Distance: 2.4 miles
Elevation: 409
Time: 1:20
The stairs were not recommended…
In fact…
Let’s take a closer look, shall we?
Elekala Falls
Looking down the falls from the bridge:
GPS Map of the Hike
Because the roads still weren’t clear, and there were multiple accidents on the Interstate, we got a second day off from work.
After lunch, I took another walk.
An utterly gorgeous day.
These trees by the Law School were FULL of robins. At least 20.
Near the President’s House, looking down to Beechurst, the Mon, and the power plant.
At the Law Center, looking over and past the football complex.
Finally! The first hike of 2015!
Between illnesses and unpleasant weather, we didn’t get out to hike until today, but it was a gorgeous, glorious day for the first hike of the year. Even better, last year I purchased snow pants, which means that I wasn’t afraid to kneel down in the snow to get closer to interesting things, and I didn’t come out of the woods soaking wet from the knees down.
Because the entrance gate is closed, there are a limited number of trails to hike (unless you want to walk into the park and then start your hike, which I don’t), so we took my favorite trail, Scotts Run.
Trail: Scotts Run
Elevation: 1168 feet
Distance: 4.4 miles
Time: 2:13
GPS map of the hike.
Not only were there no existing images of a Bespin Clown Car, apparently NO ONE ELSE ON THE INTERNET EVER MADE THIS MISTAKE.
What do I win?
Last Saturday (because this Saturday was rainy) we went to Harpers Ferry to try and catch some of the last leaf change in the state.
We’d considering walking on that part of the Appalachian Trail, but instead ended up taking the Maryland Heights Trail which had a gorgeous overview of the Shenandoah River, Potomac River, and Harpers Ferry.
There were a TON of people all over the place, including at least two families attempting to take strollers up the Maryland Heights Trail. (This was a terrible idea.)
See that rockline? That’s where we hiked to, and where the above pictures were taken.
Gorgeous day.
Our whole walk was about 6.5 miles, and our elevation gain was 1579 feet. And the Maryland Heights Trail was quite steep in places.
While we were staying with Mechanicky Gal, we went to Cabrillo National Monument to visit the tide pools. We also got to go into the Old Point Loma Lighthouse. Most of the rooms were closed off to the public, so you could look in and see what it would have looked like when it was in use.
The tide pools were gorgeous, and I loved walking along them.
Oh, well yes, there were a lot of rocks. So I took lots of pictures of rocks. Because I like rocks.
This is the Old Point Loma Lighthouse
You could walk up to almost the top of the tower, but you couldn’t go outside, or climb the ladder to the light.
I took this picture to remind me to look up when and why lighthouses would use different colored lights.
Short answer (according to the internet): it depended upon the light house. The rate of rotation (sometimes in combination with colors) could designate a specific lighthouse. The color could designate the location of the lighthouse in relation to the bay.
Also: This guy again.
Gorgeous pine in the entrance circle. (Not sure what species. I didn’t get a close-up pictures of the leaves, and Michael and I can’t decide.)
Shaw agave (Agave shawii)
Common Periwinkle (Littorina littorea)
Coyote Bush/Brush (Baccharis pilularis) has incredibly soft flowers.
(Thanks Mary!)
Not that you can tell from this picture, but we saw a seal!
And the next day we saw dolphins!
Yeah, for both of those you’re just going to have to take my word for it.
After we met up with Mechanicky Gal and Carol Elaine, we got to go to THE LA BREA TAR PITS!
Where we saw… FOSSILS!
BISON!
Why hello there!
American Lion!
SABER-TOOTH!
MAMMOTH!
Ground. Sloth.
DIRE WOLF!
OK. Maybe dire wolves weren’t so smart.
Coyote! Raptor! And some sort of prey!
MAMMOTH TOE!
SO ADORABLE! (Well, perhaps not adorable.)
It was MARVELOUS! And I was VERY EXCITED TO SEE IT!
Carol Elaine generously offered to give us a tour of JPL. (Sadly, it was a holiday of some sort, so I was unable to purchase post cards. You can’t imagine how much pain this caused me.)
I only had my cell phone, so most of my pictures were shit, but here are a few nice ones.
Here’s my favorite thing!
This was a light show that showed you the communication between different satellites and ground control. It was a brilliant way to show the flow of information.
The lights going down the strand represent data coming from a satellite. The lights going up the strands represent data going to the satellite.
Some satellites have very little data transmission right now.
It was a genius learning tool, but also very pretty to watch.
The text that’s hard to read says:
The Habitable Zone: 00001
Confirmed: 01743
Candidates: 03276
HI!
This absolutely delighted me, though I have fears it was a set up, and not just the result of some random argument.
Take THAT Neil deGrasse Tyson!
I still have lots of pictures to go through, but have been trying to get caught back up on, well, everything, so here’s a quick look at some of the wildlife we saw.
Here’s an antelope squirrel (Ammospermophilus leucurus I think), which I’d assumed was a chipmunk.
I’m hoping this is a coyote (Canis latrans) because I’ve never seen one in the wild, and was excited to see it.
(there are two other pictures if you click through to Flickr.)
I believe this is a Western Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma californica)
(I got another picture of a different scrub jay in a tree.)
I may also have seen a Pinyon Jay, but I couldn’t get a clear picture to check.
LIZARD! Most likely a Side-blotched Lizard (Uta stansburiana) but I’m pretty reptile illiterate.
We also saw lots of ravens, but I didn’t take any pictures of ’em. Mostly because I was too busy taking pictures of rocks.
Since we were only a few hours away (and in California) we made a point to visit Joshua Tree National Park.
Since I always buy books of the places we visit, I decided this time to purchase the books BEFORE we left. One of the books I got was Joshua Tree: The Complete Guide. This was completely helpful, since it divided the trails into types, as well as distance and time.
Also helpful was the Joshua Tree National Park (National Geographic Trails Illustrated Map).
We combined the two, to give us an idea of what we’d be able to manage in a day, and plan the drive to see as much of the area as we possibly could.
We walked/hiked the following trails:
Cholla Cactus Garden
Arch Rock Nature Trail
Barker Dam Trail
Hidden Valley Trail
Cap Rock
Black Rock Trail
We drove up to Keys View
We entered the park from the south, Cottonwood Springs entrance. All of the Cottonwood Springs trails are closed, because multiple floods have exposed toxic mine tailings, so no hiking. This took us through the Colorado Sonoran dessert, which was full of Cholla cactus, Creosote bushes, Ocotillo trees, and Smoke trees.
But what I liked best were the rock formations.
We drove north, and move into the Mojave desert, which really did look quite different from the Sonoran.
Joshua Tree and the desert were interesting places to visit, but I would definitely not want to live there.
