inglorious wanderer

"The falling leaves, drift by my window  The falling leaves of red and gold  I see your lips, the summer kisses  The sunburned hands I used to hold." The good old song popularized by the good old dead Nat King Cole is full of sentiments about autumn leaves which is its title. I could have picked a more upbeat song but Google which is getting old but still good couldn't come up with any. It's September 22 and it happens to be Fall equinox. I  think of Fall equinox as the start of autumn when foliage change colors and leaves collectively fall. Fall equinox, according to timeanddate.com is the second equinox of the year. The first one is the Spring equinox or vernal equinox. I decided to go to the San Dieguito River  trails by the historic adobe house at Escondido when I couldn't find early autumn foliage along the trails going to Stanley Peak at the Daley Ranch.  In San Diego, summer always seem to extend into early autumn, except for shortening days. I ...

"Ventura Highway in the sunshine Where the days are longer, the nights are stronger than moonshine Some people  say this  town doesn't look good in snow..." I am playing Ventura Highway on my phone unwary of running it out of battery. Yes, the members of the band would probably  be 75 years olds  of they are still alive.  I am really trying not to use this phone but here I am blogging. I love riding Amtrak. Instead of driving for two hours from San Diego, the train ride takes four hours. The last time I rode Amtrak, I was with the Rose of Jeddah POLO. (Hi 'te Guy, wish you were here.)  I tinker with my D3200 while listening to fellow passengers. A heavily inked lady with a surf board is bound to Oregon and the conductor tells her that she's getting off LA. A couple and another elderly wanted to occupy the area designated for families or a group of 3 or more. The conductor comes back and the...

I finally bagged  good old fucking Mount  Baldy after a glimpse of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument and spring on a midsummer day at the San Gabriel Mountains . Mount Baldy has been one of the must bag peaks for hikers in Southern California. It is one of the three tallest fucking saints in the area. Mount Baldy is also known as the  San Antonio Mountain, then there's San Jacinto Mountain  and the third one which makes me drool of  excitement with  the mere thought of bagging it,  is San Gorgonio Mountains. I came, I crawled and I conquered! I custom printed the t-shirt for the occasion. I did  come  prepared with a gorilla tripod so I could  take better selfies using a self-timer or a shutter remote. I did crawl to get to the iron pole marker  that tells hikers they have just hiked 3.5 miles from the Baldy Notch Ski Area into  the Devil's Backbone Trail. The D...

MTRP is the Mission Trails Regional Park. The park was once a part  of the Kumeyaays ancestral domain for over 2,000 years. The Kumeyaay domain  included the most  of what is now the San Diego county, the Laguna Mountains, the Anza Borrego Dessert, Imperial Valley and the northern portion of Baja California, Mexico until the Spanish occupation. The discovery of the Kumeyaay tribal domain by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542 led to a settlement headed by Padre Junipero Serra in 1769. Padre Junipero  Serra is the recently canonized saint amid controversies. such as displacement of the Kumeyaays whom the Spanish missions called Indians, the indigenous peoples whom they might be referring as indios. The Spanish fort and mission complex known as the  Mission Bassilica San Diego de Alcalá which is located not far from what is now the MTRP  was built using Kumeyaay slave labor. The MTRP is the site of the Old Mi...

It is like spring on a midsummer day  at the southern portion of the Mount San Antonio. The portion of the San Bernardino National Forest where the San Antonio Ski Hut  is built does not go with  the Old Baldy  nickname of Mount San Antonio. Mount Baldy or Mount San Antonio is the tallest of the several  mountains of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. At 10,064 ft. elevation, San Antonio hairs  had all been plucked out and could not grow it back. The other mountains in the San Gabriel Mountains are Iron Mountain, Dawson Peak, Pine Mountain, Mount Harwood and  Wright Mountain, Mount Baden-Powel among others. The San Antonio Ski Hut was first built in 1935. It burned down in 1936 and was rebuilt the following year. The 79-year old wooden structure was conceptualized by Dr. Walter Mosauer, a professor of zoology at UCLA who was also a skiing enthusiast. The ski hut was built by the Ski Mountaineers Section a year after the group was f...