Las Ramblas to Patriot Trail

Las Ramblas in Spanish is also referred to as "wadis" in Arabic and Hebrew. Dictionary.com define a wadi as a gully, a streambed that remains dry except the rainy season. A rambla could also refer to an espanade.  An esplanade or a promenade could be a paved boardwalk where people could take a leisurely walk and chill.

The trail must have gotten its name from Camino Las Ramblas, the road that dead ends into the Las Ramblas Trailhead. The camino is sort of the gateway into San Juan Capistrano, a city named after the Mission San Juan Capistrano led by then Padre Junipero Serra  who enslaved and tried to Christianize the Acjachemen tribe of Native Americans. Camino Las Ramblas is east of Interstate  5 and accross westward is Dana Point, the harbor where one could take a ferry and  cross the California channel into the Catalina Island.

The rambling trails from the Las Ramblas trailhead branch out into several trails across the rolling hills overlooking the westside of the Cleveland National Forest. All of them are maintained by the San Juan Capistrano Recreational Trail System. 

The forks are not marked and I blindly follow an uphill trail that became the Harbor View Trail.  

I decided to go right from a cross road and got into Patriot Hill. 

I saw my first prickly pear cactus along the Patriot Trail. The cacti all seem to be recovering from a long drought. Desert cacti seem to be a lot different from mountain cacti. The ones on the these trails seem be old, brittle  and falling apart.

The fiddlenecks seem to be the early bloomers. 

Ladybugs seem to like them.

I wanted to graze on the miner's lettuce.

The Patriot Trail points to the sun. Looks like the moon is photo bombing the sun. 

The flag is torn. Some idiot actually wrote a celebratory note on the flag. There ware no log books.
 

Perhaps there are not many inglorious wanderers rambling into the area.