More Holiday Fun

Gail found this desk at a yard sale up the street.  We thought the big kids might like it, but look who's loving it!  Susanna is looking quite grown up for a 20 month old!

Christmas Day - Susanna is hugging her cocker spaniel from Gail and me.

We had free tickets for Sea Life Aquarium so we rode our bikes over this morning.  These are very large Japanese Spider Crabs, which can grow to 13 feet from claw to claw.

This is a new mutant life form collected from the coral reef at Bikini Atoll.

The aquarium was very clean and kid friendly.  We were pleasantly surprised.

The rays, sharks, and fish in the 200,000 gallon main tank are trained to be hand fed.  They touch their snouts to a specific target where they are fed and examined.

We thought this seahorse was ill, but were told that it was a male in labor.  He is about to birth about 1,800 baby seahorses!  How did the males get conned into doing this!

Holiday Fun

Below, are a few random photos from the past few days.

Nick came to visit us, which meant a Gail table setting.  She's the master of presentation!

We also had a tour and dinner at the Stone Brewery over in Escondido.

Our tour guide had a glass of beer in her hand for the whole tour.  She was quite the expert!

A selfie from the point of view of our beer glasses.

Stone has a great outdoor dining area.

Gail's gift to Nick and Cassidy - a homemade cheesecake!

The Johansons were treated to this decadent Gail brownie creation adorned in a Three Musketeers theme!

Susanna really got into the excitement of Christmas Day.  What a cutie!  Well, I guess I better start hiking off some calories soon - Happy New Year, everyone!

Eastern San Diego County

Early Sunday morning, we departed for Julian where we were able to check in early at the Julian Lodge. From there, we drove several miles through apple orchards and farm country to go hiking in the Santa Ysabel Open Space Preserve.

It was not only a beautiful day, but the Santa Ana wind was blowing like crazy.

An acorn woodpecker granary in this dead sycamore trunk.

Sycamore bark looking like a camo paint job.

We came close to contented cows and calves.

A field of bare stems with red berries.

Gail took this lovely picture while we climbed up to a high hilltop.

Another Gail shot!

There are tastier Julian pies than this one!

The wind was so strong at the top of this ridge that walking against it was difficult.  I bet there were gusts over 50 m.p.h.

The massive 2003 Cedar Fire started near here and was the largest California wildfire ever.  It killed 15 people and burned over 280,000 acres.  It is amazing Julian has never burned to the ground.

These rocks make great back-scratchers  for the cattle!

No morteros but there was evidence of fires being burned in this natural rock shelter.

A first!  This was our first ever sighting of a Lewis's Woodpecker.  It is colored unlike any other North American woodpecker.  There were two others nearby.

Way off to the side of the trail Gail spotted white objects she thought were bones.  Yep!  Cow bones with gnaw marks on them.  (Notice I am secretly carrying mistletoe.)

Yes...  may I help you?

The little town of Julian is quaint with its old wooden buildings and holiday lights.  There is no stoplight in town, or chain stores for that matter.

And so ended Sunday evening.  Tomorrow, we're off to drop down the mountain to the Anza Borrego Desert, just twenty minutes away.

We went from a blustery temperature in the 50's, to calm desert air approaching 80.

Once down on the desert floor, we drove southeast about 30 miles to our destination, a trail/jeep road that would lead us into Canyon Sin Nombre - canyon without a name.  We had read that there was a slot canyon there.

We left Dusty at the top, as the road down looked to be for serious off-road vehicles only.  Besides, we like to hike.

The canyon narrowed between steep cliffs that seemed to be a twisted mish-mash of earth and rock - a geologist's dream!

Notice the crumpled swirls of sedimentary layers.  The Elsinore Fault in this region has produced horizontal displacements of up to 3 miles!

We love the desert in December!

There was no sign for the slot canyon, but Gail had a hunch.  See that slit in the cliff directly above Gail's head?  That turned out to be the entrance.

Going in, Gail checks out some guano.

Some sections were very cave-like as we climbed higher and higher.  In fact, the temperature was very cool like a cave.

A tight fit!

Those walls are about 150 feet tall.

The climb was pretty steep most of the way.

Gail says she looks like a polyp in a large intestine in this photo.

 We made it to the top entirely through that slot canyon.  We started way down there at the bottom.

After pausing for lunch, we opted to take an "Indian trail" back along the ridge tops in the direction of the highway.

It was like a cactus garden up on the ridges.  We saw hoof prints and droppings from mountain sheep, also.

Finally, Dusty came into sight way off in the distance at the top of that trace of a road.  But to get there, we had to scramble down the steep mountainside without sending a rock down on the other person.

Comin' down!

There are some quirky folks who live out in the desert.  On the drive home we had to pull off the highway to check out this compound.

Coyote's Flying Saucer Retrieval and Repair Service.  Wow!

A wild man lives here!

Nearby was this Desert View Tower, very suggestive of the one at the Grand Canyon.

Ahhh, home at last at our expanding desert landscape where Penelope and Yummy Delicious have had the house to themselves. "What Does the Fox Say?"