Pinnacles National Park

Pongo Goes to Pinnacles
June 9, 2013

Pongo Handling His Navigation Duties

Soundtrack:

• David Bowie -- The Next Day
• Grizzly Bear -- Shield

The best national parks have an aura about them.  You can feel it when you're in one.  Everything is natural, except perhaps for the road you're driving on, but it's also pristine in a way that is difficult to describe.  Some of the parks--Crater Lake and Yellowstone, for example--were mystical places to the Native Americans, and when you visit them you can get a very strong sense of why that was the case.  You don't just understand it intellectually or see it in the way that you might appreciate a beautiful painting, you feel it in your spine and in your lungs.  It's the kind of feeling that can alter your perspective on the world.

Pinnacles National Park is not such a place.

Honestly, I don't understand why Pinnacles is a national park.  It was a national monument for decades and should have remained so, if you ask me.  One of its best features is how easy it is to find yourself in a spot where nothing can be heard but the buzzing of bees, the chirping of birds and the wind in the trees.  Park status can only hurt that as more people will be drawn to the park than when it was "merely" a monument.

When I say I don't understand why Pinnacles is a national park, that doesn't mean I don't have an appreciation for the place.  It has a calming affect one me, it's some place I'm sure I'll visit many more times in the future.  I can't imagine ever taking a visitor of this great state to the park, though.  There are so many amazing things to experience in California, Pinnacles would have to be way down on the list of places I'd want to share.  Its geology is unique to the region, but that's hard to appreciate unless you've got a good sense of what the area is like.  How would you know how wrong these rock formations are unless you know what should be here instead?

Bush Inspection

I brought Pongo along on this visit to Pinnacles.  Dogs are only allowed on the paved areas and campgrounds, so our access to the park's features was very limited.  However, having Pongo along helped to expose Pinnacles best feature: the native wildlife.

Brush Rabbits

We hiked around the campground, which is much larger than I had realized.  Pongo inspected just about every bush in the place.  He'd often get excited and lunge forward.  We'd then hear a panicked rustling and often a squirrel or a rabbit (or two or three) would erupt from beneath the bush making a beeline for some place a little more Pongo-safe.  Pongo would want to take chase, and of course he couldn't, but he seemed content to move on to the next bush to try it again.  I had no idea there were so many animals hiding so close to the road!  There were a number of mysterious critters I never got a good look at.

Acorn Woodpecker

Happy Camper

When we got back to the Visitor Center Pongo refused to get into the car.  He was having too much fun.  I promised him we weren't done but he wouldn't listen.  We'd been out for over an hour and a half, and often he's ready to go home after that amount of time.  Not here, though.  I had to pick him up and put him in the car.

We drove to Bear Gulch.  I figured we'd be able to see an acorn woodpecker or two since there are a couple of trees they use as granaries right by the parking lot.  Sure enough, there was a sentinal standing guard when we arrived.  Pongo wasn't too interested in the woodpecker, though.  He wanted to scare up some more rabbits and squirrels.

We walked the short distance between the Bear Gulch parking lot and the end of the road and back.  We didn't see any rabbits here, but we saw a few squirrels.  It still wasn't enough for Pongo.  He refused to jump into the car again.  This time he didn't try to duck me when I picked him up, though, so he wasn't completely against the idea of going home, I think.

A Local Biker Gang

We had a little problem, though.  Since we couldn't go on the trails, we were kind of out of options in terms of new places to walk.  We could walk on the roadside, but that didn't seem like much fun to me.  What I've learned from my past visits here is when in doubt, go to the Visitor Center.  There always seems to be something happening there, I even saw a condor there once.  That's where we started this trip, and that's where we'd end it.

Quail Magnet

Things were hopping when we got back to the Visitor Center.  In the big field behind the Center were a few dozen turkeys, a couple of deer and a handful of quail.  We got out and watched as small groups of quail came running from out of the surrounding trees onto the field.  Then I started noticing a number of rabbits.  they weren't quite standing out in the open, but they weren't exactly hiding either.  Pongo was a little more interested in the turkeys at this point, so we followed them as they moved off into a nearby field.

Turkey Vultures

We saw a lot of turkey vultures.  Pinnacles seems to be a favorite hangout for these guys.  We didn't see a condor this time, so that was a little disappointing.  After following the turkeys and watching the quail for a while, Pongo was ready for the trip home.  He hopped right into the car when I opened the door and fell asleep pretty quickly once we got on the highway.  I think he had a pretty good day.