Day 114: Tres Pinos, CA
Sunny and warm.
Last night as we were driving to Tres Pinos we saw a sign for the Pinnacles National Park. Wait, what? We didn’t know about this national park! So today we decided to check out the park first thing in the morning. The park has something to do with a volcano some 60 million years ago moving some rock 200 miles to the north over the eons.
How the rock got there is too complicated for me, but as we pulled in, deer scattered out of our way and so did wild turkeys. We saw some waysides (informational signs) and telescopes installed, pointing at some large birds circling in the distance over a cliff. It turns out that the birds are California Condors and the condors, back from near-extinction, appear to like this location.
This is a small park in central California loaded with wildlife. Today we saw deer, turkeys, quail, condors, acorn woodpeckers, blue birds, little birds, hummingbirds, more deer, more quail and woodpeckers, squirrels, ravens, and a VERY large, FURRY, tarantula-type spider. Correction: that was a tarantula!
The acorn woodpeckers are fascinating. They drill finger-size holes in the old oak trees and tuck an acorn into each hole. There are lots of these red-capped birds here.
Somehow we crossed from “winter is coming“ to the south. I think it happened in Sacramento. I wore my tank top for the first time in months and Tom went swimming in the pool here at the park. I think the high was 85° today. Look what it is supposed to be the rest of the week!
True to national parks, we had no phone service. I finished the last of my paper National Geographics and began reading a book that Ross gave us called “Travels with Charley” by John Steinbeck. Fifty-nine years ago, John Steinbeck embarked on a cross country trip with his dog in a pickup truck with a camper on top of it. Although much has changed, much has stayed the same, and it has been easy to relate to his experiences. I wish I could write my journal as well as he wrote his journal.
Arvitrekking 
You are doing a beautiful job with your journal! I’m telling you, I really look forward to each entry. The acorn woodpeckers truly are fascinating. I wonder what the purpose of doing that could be? I’m going to Google it, as I have with many of the places you’ve been to learn more about them. Remember Ed Raciborski and Rob McCaleb from our old QA days? I saw them at the golf course over the summer and told them about your travels. Ed said, “That’s so cool! Our little Jen…” LOL!
LikeLike
Your comments mean so much to me. Thanks! Please tell Ed and Rob hello for me. What a good group of people!
Call me out if you google something and I got it wrong!
LikeLike