If it's Tuesday it must be Los Padres National Forest

So here we are (David and Marty) in Paradise Campground in Los Padres National Forrest, just a few miles west of Santa Barbara, while Dee and Paul are visiting a long-time family friend/member near Santa Monica.  We'll reunite on Wednesday at Paradise.

We parted ways yesterday morning shortly after grocery shopping in Yucca Valley (no, it doesn't have anything to do with throwing up).  Dee and Paul headed toward Santa Monica on I-10, while David and Marty skirted around on the north of LA on CA247.  Quite a change in scenery for D&M, including graffiti-painted rocks and real desert.

This area below on 247 heading toward Victorville.

And even more arid as the road heads west!

But as we then headed further west and picked up CA 18 toward Santa Clarita, things changed even more and suddenly there were irrigated sod farms that eventually turned into citrus groves of oranges and limes between Santa Clarita and Ventura.  

And then below, at Ventura we got to see the Pacific Ocean.

It has been quite a few years since David and Marty have together seen this body of water, not since  Hawaii in 1968 before Bill, their first born, saw the light of day!  (Bill just turned 45.)

The Pacific coastline is so very different from the Atlantic.  What more could we say?  It simply feels different; maybe from knowing in our bones that the sun rises from the Atlantic but sets in the Pacific.

Now, backtracking a bit.  Nearly every day in the Indian Cove Campground in Joshua Tree we'd been seeing this little critter.  Try as we might, we didn't find it among the chipmunks listed in the Audubon Guide.  But after getting a photograph of one of these little creatures Marty and David have identified it as the White-Tailed Antelope Squirrel!  We all thought we were seeing a chipmunk and that is what led us astray.  Probably won't be showing you a photo of this guy, you will just have to take our word for it.

We lied, here he is!

Back to Los Padres NF:  It was a spectacular drive up from Ventura to Santa Barbara on US101, which is quite a winding road.  From Santa Barbara we went east up over the coastal range on CA154, which was even more winding, eventually reaching Paradise Road and the campground.  We are watching the weather for sure because there are supposed to be two storms that will hit us between Wednesday and Saturday.  These storms are predicted to be the strongest rain in the past three years.  We shall see!  There is no phone coverage here and of course,  no Wi-Fi.  So, we'll just add on to this as we go along and post later in the week. 

Now Thursday

Dee and Paul have arrived shortly after noon on Wednesday.  We got the first of our rain storms starting late in the afternoon and well into the night.  We have awakened to puddles, something folks here have not seen in a long time.  More rain coming too.

The campground is littered with holes in the ground.  There are hundreds of them and they have been made by the little guy above.  This is a California Ground Squirrel.  This llittle man is marking one of the posts in front of our camp site.  This action because I had put out seed for birds which the squirrels ate, and this guy is just feet away from another squirrel who is eating seed but he dares not get any closer.  When he did the eating squirrel did one of those turning sideways toward the one of the ground and arching his back slightly more a cat like behavior and one I'd not seen in squirrels.

The campground is also filled with huge beautiful trees: the Coast Live Oak.  Some of these trees are massive.  There are several bug collectors on a few of these trees as it seems they may be attacked by  some insect. The insect is the goldspotted oak borer and is damaging trees in this area.  The trees are limited to the southern coastal California area.

Thursday

While drinking our coffee this morning we were graced by a small herd of female mule deer who walked right through the campground and by our sites!  We have also seen the Black Phoebe for the first time.

Caught this one popping up to get an insect!  Just a lucky shot.

The Mule deer has such a lovely face, with the ears trimmed in black.

Another treat this morning was a flock of turkeys walking through the camp site.  There must have been 10 females followed by a huge tom who was often displaying his tail feathers, however, this shot came as he was pulling them back in.

We were also treated to watching a Western Bluebird take a bath in a puddle in the campground road. Really quite lovely.  His mate joined him but not for bathing.  It was interesting to watch this little guy as he was nearly down on his side in this bathing process.  Given that he may have never experienced a puddle before he got wonderful use of this one!

We are also seeing Oregon Juncos which are a lovely little bird.  The Audubon Guide shows them as coming into our part of the country, but I've never seen them.

We got out for a five-mile + walk/hike today and saw so many Scrub Jays (didn't get a photo though) and some fine looking Turkey Vultures too.

So it has been a great day for sightings of birds and critters.  However, after last night's 1" of rain there have been few ground squirrels out.  Maybe they were drowned in their holes as they filled with water, let's hope not.

One last bird shot for you.  This is the Acorn Woodpecker.  We had seen them in Texas three years ago and saw one again today.

Friday, 28 February

We had rain all night long.  Now at 7:00 am it appears to have stopped for a bit.  We have awakened to find our campers in the middle of very large puddles!