Moments in Dirt and Ink

Outside sketches of the month. Apartment in downtown Pasadena. Colorado and Wilson, Pasadena. (From my photo.) Old fireproof warehouse for the long gone trains. (From my photo.) A tree and hitching post by the campground .

Angeles National Forest Locate the trailhead. A handy map to the trailhead found at the end of the road which is not, according to the map, where the trail starts. Grizzly Flat is a short way up the north end of the Dark Canyon trail. The south end starts in Oakwilde, about 4 miles up Arroyo Seco starting near JPL. It is marked with one of those flat, brown stick signs, but rather than simply saying "trail" as they normally do, it is well marked with promises that the trail further on through Dark Canyon is unmaintained and likely to take your life if you try to travel along it. The north end, in contrast, starts about a mile along Big Tujunga, which is reportedly difficult to pass in high water, and doesn't really have a trail along it from the road. It is true that the route is difficult to determine among all the choices for the first section along the creek, but it is easy to find as it heads upward away from the water. From there is is well maintained t...

Los Padres National Forest Locate the trailhead. Going down Paradise road to Red Rock, there is a fork in the road at lower Rancho Oso where the left side goes up to Upper Rancho Oso. Mom and I took a small hike up this trail to see what was on it. Turns out, there's a lot of people with dirt bikes on it since they are allowed on the fire road that makes up the first part of the trail. However, within the first mile of the road, there's a trail going off to the left. This one does not allow any vehicles, off road or otherwise, and the sounds of bikes vanished as we proceeded down it. The trail was quite delightful. There was a spot along it where the cliff had eroded into a big bowl and the sounds of the creek were amplified so that as you approached it, you weren't sure if there wasn't more water coming down off the side until you could see. As we approached, some hikers were standing in it talking and their rumbling amplified voices were carried quite far...