Hike to Spur Meadow
The spiky alien seed pod
DAY 3
We will be doing a 4 wheel drive meet up course in Corral Canyon Forrest Area on Sunday so we decided to just head in that direction as there are at least 2 campgrounds in the area. This area is in eastern San Diego not far off the 8 freeway.
We chose the Corral Canyon campground down in a secluded feeling little canyon full of oaks and some scattered manzanitas. Again we arrived and no one else was around. There is no ranger on duty here as all you need is an adventure pass to camp. Corral Canyon is a fairly popular OHV recreation area so the place is more set up for dirt bikes and atvs than anything else, but it is still a nice little spot. The only funkiness is that with a camper like ours you can’t drive right into your camp spot, They have it set up that you park outside the camping area and camping area itself, with a little fire pit and ample space, is enclosed by heavy duty metal barriers. It seems like they are probably just trying to prevent the dirt bikes from tearing up all the landscaping. They do leave a little narrow opening that Malachi the Wonder Beast managed to find his way through as he couldn’t jump the barriers with his old man haunches.
As we had our pick of the spots we picked one in the middle with a nice old oak providing some good shade. We scavenged the other camp sites for some firewood and ended up with enough for a nice little fire. We had a late lunch so we had a popcorn dinner by the fire.
A couple groups of folks with dirt bikes pulled in after dark and stumbled around finding spots. I fully expected to hear the rumble of dirt bikes in the morning, a sound I always liken to a pack of angry bees.
DAY 4
The angry bees were indeed in effect in the morning, It was fun see them tearing out of the campsite onto several trails that lead right off from it. We strolled around with Malachi the Wonder Beast in the morning and I gathered a bunk of fallen oak scraps to toss in the fire that night.
We talked with one of the bikers and he said it was no problem to hike the trails. You get ample warning when a biker is coming your way because of the ‘angry bees’ noise and have plenty of time to get to the side of path out of the way. We went on a trail that lead up to a vista of rock and shrub covered landscape with parts of San Diego and Mexico in the distance. I caught a few pokemon up on the hill when my cell service popped back in and we found a really interesting spikey seed pod of some sort we had never seen before. We searched for gold amongst the scattered rocks, but alas none was to be found. I am constantly tempted to collect pretty rocks and so found it very hard to ignore some of the prettier samples of quartz striated with bits of black rock. We really have no place in the camper to store a giant rock collection through. We were unable to resist a particularly pretty red rock. We will prevail upon a friend coming to the 4 by meet up to take it home with him until we are back in town. We are goofs.
We had a nice dinner of some curry sauce with veggies and rice and sausage from our favorite butcher in San Diego. Sepulveda Meats has the best meat and the beer brauts are a favorite of Zack Attack’s.
We had another fire and sat around it diddled with various projects. I threw sticks on the fire and then made some smores. Smores are messy by the way. It is impossible to make one and not become a sticky mess. Yummy though. Zack read the Toyota manual. He likes manuals a little too much. We made friends with a cute little pupperino named Autumn. Autumn came to visit us repeatedly and didn’t seem to care to return to her Dad when he called. Both Malachi the Wonder Beast and Autumn the little sneakerton kept finding old bones left on the ground. I was heard to yell, “Drop it,” in stern tones with great frequency.
4 by class tomorrow. Whoppee! We’ll see how much the Grolar Bear can handle as he is a little bit beefier than we had originally anticipated. The camper sits on our Tacoma and we made quite a few modifications to compensate for the extra weight, but we are still at max capacity especially for 4 wheel driving. Tomorrow will be a good gauge of things.