Pinnacles National Park

Hot Dog!

July 20, 2014

I hadn't taken Pongo on a trip since going to the Grand Canyon for Memorial Day weekend.  He was due.  I decided to take him to one of his favorite places, the campground at Pinnacles National Park.

Acorn Woodpecker -- Pinnacles National Park, CA

I was wearing a sweater when we left Alameda.  The sun was hidden behind gray clouds.  When we got to Pinnacles, it was 99 degrees.  Very little was going on at the park.  It was just too damned hot.  The animals were all hunkered down except for a few birds scattered about.  The few campers that were there were at the pool.  We did our normal walk around the campground but there wasn't much to see and the heat was too much for Pongo, so we cut our visit short and headed home.

Yellow-billed Magpie -- Highway 25, San Benito County, CA

We saw a flock of yellow-billed magpies a few miles outside of the park.  I always like seeing these birds.  Not only are they colorful, they are also found only in California, and even within California their range is limited.

Highway 25, San Benito County, CA

Hot Dog

A thunder storm was rolling in during our walk around the campground.  By the time we stopped to take photos of the magpies the temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees and we were feeling drops of rain.  The storm didn't open up on us, which was a little disappointing because it's been a while since I've seen a good rain.

Pinnacles National Park

Pongo Breaks In His New Gear

March 30, 2014

Soundtrack:

• Mono -- Hymn to the Immortal Wind
• Heatmiser -- Mic City Son
• The Decemberists -- The King Is Dead

Pongo got some new hiking gear, so I thought we'd break it in with a trip to one of his favorite places: Pinnacles National Park.

Pongo Busts Out His New Backpack

Stylish, ain't he?  If you can't tell, that's a big cheesy grin he's wearing on his face.  He loves spending the day at Pinnacles.

Acorn Woodpecker -- Pinnacles National Park, CA

Nuttall's Woodpecker

We don't get to see a whole lot of the park, unfortunately.  Dog are only allowed on the roads and campground.  Pongo doesn't seem to mind.  We walk around the campground and down the road a ways and he's happy as a clam.

We're used to having the place pretty much to ourselves, but Spring is Pinnacles busy season.  About half of the camping spots were occupied.  That's not too bad, but we didn't see a single rabbit or deer, and I'm sure it had to do with the extra human activity of the tourist season.

We saw a number of acorn woodpeckers and a single nuttall's woodpecker.  He was pecking a hole into a tree big enough for him to climb into.  He was building a home, I guess.

He.  She.  It could have been a lady woodpecker for all I know.

The Road We Walk On -- Pinnacles National Park, CA

California Thrasher

Pongo's taste for adventure has increased dramatically over the last year.  He doesn't seem ready to leave at any given point.  That's a big change from when I first started taking him out.  He used to get freaked out after an hour or two and I'd have to take him home.  I don't know if it was too much stimulus or he was worried about never getting back home or what.  That's not a problem anymore.

I saw a couple of condors flying high above the hills behind the visitor's center.  They were mixed in with a bunch of turkey vultures.  It's impossible for me to pick them out from that distance with the naked eye.  I could tell once I'd zoomed in on them with my camera, though.  The markings on the underside of the wings are very different for vultures and condors.  The pictures I got were pretty bad, but you can at least tell it's a condor in the photos.  I'm just glad I don't have to make my living doing this kind of thing.

California Condor -- Pinnacles National Park, CA

Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park

Working Birds

December 15-20, 2013

I've been spending a lot of time at work over the last few weeks.  I haven't had much of a chance to get out.  I decided to take my camera to the office and try to grab some pictures at lunch.  I caught a few birds in the parking lot, but a couple of times I drove down to Pleasanton Ridge for little lunch hour nature hikes.  It was a great way to spend a lunch hour, I suspect I'll make it a regular habit for a while.

Dark-eyed Junco -- Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park, CA

There are two large trees in the Pleasanton Ridge parking lot.  There's an insane amount of activity around those two trees.  The first thing I noticed were all the ground squirrel holes.  A small city of rodents must live under these trees.  After seeing the holes I noticed the squirrels themselves.  They're very skittish.  Then I realized the ground was moving.  It was swarming with little dark-eyed juncos.  They blended right in with the dried leaves.

Acorn Woodpecker -- Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park, CA

White-breasted Nuthatch

After watching the juncos for a while, I heard knocking in the trees.  A woodpecker!  Who doesn't like woodpeckers?  I found three acorn woodpeckers working one of the trees over.  Those little guys work hard.  Then I heard a knocking low on the trunk, much lower than where the acorn woodpeckers were storing their acorns, and I saw the head  of a nuttall's woodpecker poking around the edge of the tree.  Then a nuthatch darted around from the other side of the tree.  There were other birds darting in out of the trees.  What a crazy amount of activity for just a couple of old trees.

Nuttall's Woodpecker -- Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park, CA

Western Scrub-jay

There's a lot of activity up on the trail as well, but to really get a hold of it you've got to stop and allow yourself to become part of the environment.  The trees and bushes are full of sparrows that will drop down to forage once you've become part of the landscape.  I heard frogs croaking on one of the grassy hillsides, but I couldn't find the frogs.  I found a little hole, I suspect they were tucked down inside it.

Golden-crowned Sparrow -- Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park, CA

Shoot, I almost left out the cedar waxwing I saw at work.  What a pretty bird,  He was too small to get a good look at when he was right in front of me.  Once I got home and saw the pictures, though, I became an instant fan.  What a beautiful bird.  Great hair, too.

Cedar Waxwing -- Pleasanton, CA

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.