Cuyamaca Rancho State Park

I had never been to Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, so looking for somewhere new to hike we headed there Thursday morning.  Cuyamaca is in the mountains south of Julian and northeast of San Diego.  After two hours of driving, we parked at the Sweetwater River trail head. Our goal was a loop that went to Dyar Spring.

 It was calm, sunny, and cold.  All the puddles were frozen solid. The elevation was over 4,000 feet - not your normal San Diego conditions.

 Much of the trail was very muddy, the upside being we had good animal tracks to ponder.  This might be a skunk track - my best guess using my tracks ID book.

 As we got closer to Dyar Spring we entered the area known as East Mesa, which looked a lot like our last big hike on Sunday.

 I saw movement under a distant oak tree which turned out to be a large wild turkey flock.

 Turkeys!

 We passed by these rocks with morteros in them. Upon finishing the Dyar Spring loop, we crossed the highway and did another loop that went to a mysterious point on the map - Airplane Monument.

Tucked off the trail was this plaque and monument.

That is the airplane engine of the fallen plane.

 We followed these tracks for a few hundred yards on the trail.  My best guess is gray fox (using Scats and Tracks of the Pacific Coast).

 The whole region was burned by the Cedar Fire of 2003. This was the largest California wildfire in history, burning over 280,000 acres.

The possible gray fox tracks led to this scat, deposited in a little scrape.

Quail tracks corroborated by the sounds of nearby quail.  We finished off the hike logging 11.5 miles.