Sorry for the absence; I took my family camping in the mountains for three days and didn’t want all those burglars who read this blog to know we would be out of town. I don’t know how many of them there are out there, but I figured I wouldn’t take my chances, given the media coverage of all the zillions of people who supposedly blogged about forthcoming vacations and then returned to find they’d been cleaned out better than a pop-up Halloween store on November 1st.  Normally, we have a trusted house sitter who guards the house while our dog guards him, but we wanted to take the dog with us and also give the trusted house sitter and friend a break.

We stayed in the Cleveland National Forest, which is not in Cleveland, but in San Diego County. The weather was ideal —  warm and dry — and the site rather secluded and peaceful because late October is off-season. The last time I went camping, four years ago, I took my elder son to Lone Pine, elevation 10,000 feet, where it was cold in July. This time the top of the mountain was a mere 5,000 feet, and 72 degrees in October. We saw many representatives of wildlife, not one of which I was able to capture a photo of. Luckily, I have artists’ representations:

The latter two were a constant presence, in alternating shifts. The first night sleeping out in the tent I was enchanted by the hooting of the local owl (wherever he was); the second night I was aching for an air rifle and a clear shot at him. The second fellow above was highly industrious and completely absorbed in his work of pounding acorns into his winter pantry all day long with  his head. Here’s an example of his handicraft:

Two animals that, in three days, we did not see:

A cow. For some reasons, there are signs heading almost the entire way up the mountain warning of cows — or, perhaps, a single cow, one lone maddened reckless bloodthirsty cow who terrorizes the mountain. We never saw it, although my 7-year-old son was insistent that he had seen both a cow and, at one point, a ram. (He also spent much of the weekend conversing in the tongue of Jar-Jar Binks, so his word is meaningless.)

And then, on the way down the mountain and home, we saw this sign. (And no sign of the animals referenced here either.)

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.