To celebrate the end of the school year, we booked a camping trip to some mountains southeast of us, the Palomar Mountain area. It gets snow in the winter (5000-6000 ft in elevation), although with the drought, it seemed the area had not seen significant moisture in quite some time.
There were a lot of big rocks near our campsite, and our kids found a few other kids to play with on this "playground." This was also the area the mosquitoes hung out in.
Excited for tinfoil dinners! They were super tasty. It got dark not too long after this, so we read from "The Chronicles of Narnia," and then went to bed.
The next day Ben figured out where some of the hiking trails were near our campground, and we took the kids on a 1.5 mile hike. It was nearing noon though, and the sun was hot, so there was quite a bit of whining on this hike.
There were some good views of the valley below us though. We could see clear into the bottom of the valley we had driven through to get up to Palomar.
Me perusing a Sunset magazine article about camping in California. Ben thought it was funny.
Palomar Mountain is home to a large observatory. They have a museum and gift shop there open to the public.
The highway leading up to the observatory is quite windy, and Jilly felt motion sick upon arrival.
Looking into the big telescope room.
This observatory continues to function and is still one of the largest in the world.
We found this big tree, I think it was a sequoia.
There were some young redwoods here too, this one full of holes, drilled by woodpeckers, and then filled in with acorns by the squirrels. It was a funny sight.
More big rocks to stand and pose on.
This is a huge coastal live oak tree. Live oaks make up much of the treescape in the higher elevations of coastal Southern California.
We took another hike later in the day, what we thought would be three miles, but ended up being more like five miles. It was a hike that took you to the top of the ridge where "Scott's cabin" was at. This cabin was an old homestead in the area.
It was a pretty hike, and we walked along the ridge for quite a while, not finding this cabin. Once we realized we were heading for the small general store by the highway, we figured we'd gone too far and needed to head back before the kids got hangry.
On the way down, with more careful observation, we found some logs outlining the place were Scott's cabin used to be. The signpost marking the site had been knocked down and that's why we didn't see it the first time through. We hiked roughly a mile beyond this point. This kids were troopers, and are still talking about the crazy hike to find Scott's cabin.
The kids enjoying Ben's fire-building skills. They were pretty tired, and the canned Progresso soup we had for dinner tasted awesome after that long hike.
We had a great time and the kids want to go camping up here again.
Other June highlights: I gave my third successful piano recital, Ben went on a green smoothie diet for two weeks and found out he's not very tolerant of milk, and Ben and the kids spent some time at Disneyland. I had a lot of work training this month as part of my contract renewal and that was not fun, but oh well.
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