The Past Week, from Griffith Park to the Border

The following are a few snapshots from the past week.

 Thursday, we traveled to Griffith Park in Los Angeles with out dear friends and neighbors, Jerry and Wanda.  Thankfully, Jerry drove, and also narrated, as he and Wanda have both lived in that area.  It was a warm hike - you can see the Hollywood sign on the hill in the background.

Proof that I was there, too!

A zoom shot of L.A. with the old cell phone.  After lunch, we went into the Griffith Park Planetarium and saw the dramatic show.

 I spent the day Saturday at Border Fields State Park, right on the Mexican border.  This was my advanced tracking and naturalist class.  This area is great for animal tracks, as the border patrol drags it smooth on a regular basis, and you get plenty of fresh animal tracks without too many dog and human tracks.

Tracks of a bounding Desert Cottontail Rabbit.  Discussion ensued over whether these were more a gallup rather than a true bound.

We spent seven hours examining tracks of bobcat, coyote, raccoon, opossum, cottontail, woodrats, and pocket mice.  We also identified several skulls below fence posts where raptors dined on small animals.

Know what this is?

Those are from a bobcat dragging a rabbit between its front legs.  You can see the smaller hind foot of the bobcat on top of the rabbit drag (its hind legs dragging).  The two long straight depressions are just marking off the area so no one steps on it.

We found this very complete coyote skeleton.

 In my garden art welding class, I completed my first big project, a spider.  This is my booth, no one else uses it.  The hours fly by in class!  One of the nice things about it is there are only three of us students in the class, and one has already taken a welding class, so it's like having two teachers!

The spider came home Monday.

Well, got to get ready for tonight's class!