Kitchen Creek Trail Nature Walk

 I am back at a PCT where I was  about four years ago, this time with the glorious holy shithead!

It was a nature walk with the San Diego Canyoneers. My second time joining the group and I am sure I would have help identifying more native plants and wild plants along the trails. None of those whatchamacallit flowers this time.

This whatthefuckitis fruit is not really a fruit but a  gall, an object of interest for Canyoneer Duane Tromby. The gall  is a benign growth that develops when a female insect injects its eggs on a branch. As the eggs mature, the benign growth changes its color like its a fruit ripening.

I have this wild plan of returning to this trail to gather mature  seeds of this wild pea vine. Young pods of this wild pea plant is edible. Humans would surely survive on these pods if they produce their own cud.

The pack rat nest that Canyoneer Terri Varnell showed me does not look anything like a pile of a hoarders's knick knack collection. Hoarders who are thought of as pack rats do not do justice to the lifestyle of animals in the wilds.

I am under the I-8 again and I am reminded of Abyan Priscilla. I think of Norah Jones who I thought was singing driving like a vagabond while listening to her  song as I drove  to Phoenix along I-8 to meet my Abyan for the first time. Norah Jones actually sang  driving  like a bag of bones. Don't know why.

The California peony always reminds me of pictures of opium poppy flowers in China. Most of the California peonies I have seen are in this area.

Jim Vernelli says the the Indian paint brush flower is now only known as paintbrush. 

According to Terri Varnelli, the virgin bower are seen in two stages with varying yellow tinge.

Virgin bowers, whether old or young, are also called climatis. 

This whatchamacallit flower is whatchamacallit no more. It's the silver leaf lotus and the plant grows on rocks. I first saw this plant at the Horsethief Canyon growing on the rocks along the creek.

I didn't have to ask a Canyoneer to identify the flower in the dried Kitchen Creek bed. It's a wild onion.

Rock climbers work on their ropes and harness on what seem to be once a waterfall. Rock climbing on a dried up waterfall could be some kind of resiliency to high alert water drought, some kind of ingenuity or plain love of outdoors. In other words, there's nothing better to do than rock climb dried up waterfalls.

There's Maria Euyogue's bench. It looks like a bench that once adorned Wilma Flintstone home. 

The dried up Kitchen Creek Waterfalls suddenly becomes bubbly with Sophie's smile.

Terri gives way to PCT thru hikers. They have a long way to go: more than 2,600 miles to the Canada. They just did their first 30 miles starting at the Mexican border. 

This lone PCT thru hiker is being advised not to eat any wild cucumber.

Also called manroot, Native Americans were said to use the wild cucumber to catch fish. They throw the wild cucumber fruit into the creek, not dried up as it is now, and the fishes  would lose their consciousness. 

Sophie's takes pictures of popcorn flowers and baby blue eyed flowers. 

Sophie's baby blue eyed flowers are  like Sophie's baby blue eyed flowers.

And Stacy's wooly blue curls may not look like the owl tattoo at the back of her left leg but they are still Stacy's wooly blue curls to me.