Moments in Dirt and Ink

Central Coast BLM Click for map. It really looks like rain, but the automatic weather report assures me that's still on for tomorrow, not today. Today will just be mostly cloudy and I want to get out to something. Something will be the Griswold Hills high point. The area has a single day use area with bathrooms as the only official parking, although there seem to be a few turnouts too. There are no legal roads, but there is a single trail. I'm not sure where exactly it goes, but it is nice to see that it climbs the steepest bit of the hills along the route I was looking at to get to the high point. At least, there's a series of switchbacks carved into the hill, so I assume that's where it goes. There's no signs by the parking lot for it. There's a gate to exit the parking area and switchbacks on the hill side, so just connect those and I should be on trail. Cows grazing on the flats between Griswold Hills and Panoche Hills and Tumey Hills. Th...

Pinnacles National Park We visited Pinnacles once long before it became the newest National Park just over 4 years ago. It was hot and I suspected it would be a most amazing place to be under the full moon when the heat would be much easier to take. Since gates were locked tight in the evening, it might have been difficult to do a night hike. Now the east side is open 24 hours a day, but the west side is still a sleepy place controlled by an automatic gate that opens at 7:30 AM and closes again at 8 PM, although it will let cars out after that. I was only pushing the opening time for the visitor center at 9 AM when I drove up and today does not look like it will have a problem with heat. The cold storm pushing through still hangs low overhead making me wonder if today really will be the good day to visit I was hoping it would be. The Chaparral Trailhead on the west side of the park. Soggy ground and soggy air have me questioning coming up here on this particular day. ...