Vernal Pools

The hike was around 7 miles through rolling hills with little altitude gain or loss.

There was so much for us to see that those with digital cameras really slowed things down.

I ended up taking 108 pictures: trees, red flowers, blue flowers, white flowers .. and just flowers ..trees ..snakes, frogs, adobe buildings .our hiking group and even Marine helicopters that flew over us.

If you don't have something to do on a Saturday or Sunday, you ought to give the Ecological Reserve serious consideration sometime soon. The weather was delightful.

I have the 108 pictures set up as a screen saver and I can almost "see" the trip as we took it. Paul KB5MU and Bob W6VR had some mean looking digital cameras and I am sure that they were able to get some great pictures. Paul, I am sure, will post many of his pictures up on his web site sometime soon. I hope that they will fill you in on some of the other things seen and done.

Oh, we went home a back way and my GPS shows us going around in circles until Barbara told us where to go! We ended up in Fallbrook after many miles of back dirt roads but it is just hard to believe that there is all of this human life out there "in them there hills" ...

> A really great hike today to the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve.

i'm glad you had a great hike. kay madore, one of our most knowledgeable docents about the vernal pool, was there most of the day to show visitors
the pool creatures. i hope she was there when you were.

> Oh, we went home a back way and my GPS shows us going around in circles
> until Barbara told us where to go! We ended up in Fallbrook after many
> miles of back dirt roads but it is just hard to believe that there is all
> of this human life out there "in them there hills" ...

that back way is really confusing, since most maps don't show all the roads, and the roads curve like crazy. thus you can't be sure that a turn to the south will take you to the south. (;-)

the best route from fallbrook to the srp the back way is here, under the heading "For most Fallbrook residents":

http://tchester.org/srp/lists/info.html#directions

but the benefits of the back way are immense, including a clear impression of the local topography. the santa margarita river and its tributaries
have carved out a big bowl, with the santa margarita mtns at the lip of the bowl to the west, and the srp mesas at the lip of the bowl to the north.

--
tom chester

The hike was in a counter clockwise direction from the parking lot (not at the visitor's center) going first to the largest pool hiking over several rolling hills. It was really difficult to hike very fast because of all of "the belly flowers" that needed to be examined .. smelled .. and photographed .. and of course, we needed to get pictures of some of the trees before than ran away.

For some reason or another, we became fascinated with taking pictures of poison oak. I had so many that I deleted about have of them saving only the "pretty" pictures (I still itch from the last two hikes!)

The large vernal pool had a wooden walkway arc with an observation area in its center where lots of pictures were taken although it was difficult to photograph the small underwater creatures. The pool also hosted at the far end groups of ducks who enjoyed the beautiful day resting and eating.

From the large pool we hiked to the adobe complex which is supposed to be the oldest building(s) in Riverside County (formerly San Diego County .. San Diego thought it was worthless land and found it difficult to get to after the railroad was washed out). The big oak tree next to the small adobe is BIG .. and is getting bigger as time goes by as evidenced by the tree swallowing up a vertical water facet.

While at the adobe we saw an operational windmill and two coyotes out in a grass field hunting for their lunch. It was really difficult for us to leave such an idyllic place with its historical background and interesting vistas.

The way back to the vehicles was uneventful ... if you can call walking through beds of flowers nestled in amongst more beautiful landscape uneventful!

After checking with the other hikers, I find that we really walked 5.8 miles according to my GPS (I did 0.5 more) and not the 7 as originally mentioned.

For those that like to hike longer distances without a camera, this is a great place to go since you can do a nice 5.8 mile hike like we did or easily do 20 miles or more around the outside edges of the Reserve .. or with all of the loops of trails, almost any distance your body is willing to endure.

I hope that Bob and Paul can fill in several paragraphs of things I did not mention ... like the "back way" home that Bob took us on after leaving the parking lot (we did "loops" there also but in a clockwise direction). I can still see the "loops" on my GPS map page!

Paul will be posting on his website sometime soon many of his photographs and he will post the URL here on the reflector .. I can hardly wait.

hmm, now lets see ... next Sunday is the 16th ... I think I need to check my calendar to see what I have planned for then ....