By 10:00 AM this morning we were happily on our way out of Thousand Trails Wilderness Lakes and the stifling high temperatures there, headed north on I-215. Traffic was very good through Riverside County and onto I-15 except for the folks headed south because there was a big, lane-blocking wreck that backed traffic up for not less than 10 miles when we flew by going the other way.
Partway up Cajon Pass we turned northwest on CA-138, skirting the north side of the San Gabriel Mountains. 138 passes over a 5000′ hump before starting a long, gradual descent into the desert towns of Lancaster and Palmdale. It is a single lane each way road and there was some construction in progress so passage was a bit slow. Fortunately, the mountains on both sides of the road are very pretty. There was even a bit of snow on the north faces of the mountains on the left side of our route.
In the unincorporated community of Acton, we turned off the main highway and found our way to the Soledad Canyon Thousand Trails Campground. Soledad Canyon seems to be right at the line separating climate zones; below us is desert scrub; we are camped in a grove of hardwoods, junipers and pinon pines and we can see pine forests above us on the mountains to the south. Vasquez Rocks, an L.A. County Park, is not far from our RV spot.
There are a family of very rotund quail, some scrub jays, big croaky ravens and a variety of small songbirds that visit us in the afternoon, maybe because we liberally bait ’em. The quail have plumage that is very detailed, right up to the little teardrop-shaped dingledork things sticking out the tops of their puny heads. The young quail have a substandard dingledork that just looks like a black post emanating from their tiny brains. Feeding disputes among the youngsters consist of pushing matches that result in two losers and a small amount of dust. The mature quail are twitchy by nature so their staccato, erratic feeding efforts result in wild, random dingledork gyrations that are almost impossible to follow without high-speed photo equipment. Pretty, but strange, birds.
It is a bit cooler here than where we were in Menifee this morning. Low 80s and a nice variable breeze from the west compelled us to set up our Barbarian Invader, open all the windows and climb inside for some power napping. Boy, do I like this retirement stuff. We’ll possibly get in some exploring of the Greater Acton Area tomorrow.
Some of the tubby quail can be seen in today’s pix by clicking here