Anniversary Mine and Anniversary Narrows

Anniversary Narrows.

Abandoned concrete spillway/stop log structure on top of the dam adjacent to the mine entrance.

It looks like the spillway was built in 1930 which I find curious since I think the mine was shut down before then.

2012 Reading List

Thereby Hangs a Tail - Spencer Quinn
Smokin' Seventeen - Janet Evanovitch
The Affair - Lee Child
The Witch of Hebron - James Kunstler
'V' is for Vengence - Sue Grafton

River Mountain Trail

Where I'm staying here in Boulder City, Nevada [20 miles east of Las Vegas] is right on the edge of the River Mountains.  On Saturday my friend Wayne and I took a hike on the River Mountain Trail leaving from the trail head on the west side of town.

This picture, of Wayne, is taken near the high-point of the trail. [looking east]

One of the mountain sheep we saw on the way up.

Las Vegas in the distance from the high-point.[looking west]

Kwaay Paay Peak - 1194 ft

Terrible hiking weather yesterday... all that haze, not sure why I bothered.  They say it'll be better next week.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Save room for dessert!

North Fortuna Peak

Yesterday I hiked up North Fortuna Peak in San Diego's Mission Trails Park.  My GPS tells me that is was a little over six miles round trip on the rout that I took.

Though this warning sign was right at the trail head I didn't see it until after I got back.  After thinking about this a bit it seems like it's not a big risk for me but I'll probably carry pepper spray in the future.

The trail starts near the Old Mission Dam.

The dam and canal were completed in 1816 after three years of construction and was in regular use until 1831.  Seems like a lot of work and expense for only 15 years of service.

The first half of the trail has some mild elevation changes.

Most of the elevation gain, to nearly 1200 ft, is on a power line access road and then the final trail to the summit.  The road was like walking on ball bearings on the way down.

Mission Trails Regional Park Hike

After a late start yesterday afternoon I headed out to explore San Diego's Mission Trails Park.  I parked at the visitor's center and stopped in for a trail map before setting off on a short 2 mile hike on the interpretive trail that circles the visitors center.

The view from the visitor center observation deck.

I'm always interested in learning about   native plants and at the start of the interpretive trail they did a great job of identifying many of the trail side plants. This was a Mohave Yucca plant-- but I probably remember it because I've seen them many times.

Heading out on the visitors center interpretive loop trail.

On the trail map above you'll see that I took a detour off of the loop trail.  This took me across a crudely constructed rock and concrete dam shown to the right.

You can learn more about the park at:
http://www.mtrp.org/

As you can see there are still a lot of trails for me to explore in the park.

Riding the rails in San Diego

I spent yesterday afternoon riding around San Diego on their trolley lines with a $5 all-day pass.  This is the only picture I actually took for this post.  The others came from the MTS system web-sight.

As shown above there are three trolley lines that surround downtown and the greater San Diego area.  I started on the E Street Station Blue Line about seven miles south of downtown.  I changed to the Green Line at the 12th & Imperial Station and rode it to the Grossmont Station where I changed to the Orange Line which I rode back to the 12th & Imperial Station.  Then I was able to get back on the Blue Line for the ride back to the E Street Station in Chula Vista.

San Diego has a long trolley history dating back to the 1880's.  You can read more about it at:
The San Diego Trolley

Yesterday was actually my second trip on the trolley.  Last week on my trip to Balboa Park I took my bike along and got off at the City College Station shown here and continued by bike to the park.

On yesterday's ride I transferred to the Green Line that circles around to the west and north of downtown San Diego.  This is a picture of the stop at the Santa Fe railroad depot.

Near San Diego State University the trolley goes into a tunnel and ends up at this station at the university.

Balboa Park

Today I rode the MTS Trolley from the E Street station here in Chula Vista downtown to tour around San Diego's Balboa park.

I was able to take my bike on the train so I biked over  to the train station about 3 miles from where I'm living in Chula Vista.  After getting off the train downtown then I rode about a half mile to get to Balboa Park.

This park is so full of attractions it's hard to know where to start.  I didn't really plan to see anything specific today but just kind of make a survey of the place and feel the vibe.

Many of the buildings in the park where built for the 1915 worlds fair- Panama-California Exposition.

...like this Botanical Building.


Just a few of the attractions that are here include:
San Diego Aerospace Museum
San Diego Art Museum
Museum of Photographic Arts
San Diego Model Railroad Museum
San Diego Natural History Museum
Botanical Building
Spreckles Organ Pavilion
San Diego Automotive Muesum

So there are many days of adventures here...

I'm sure I'll be back another day to tour the Model Railroad Museum.

... a small look at what I could see peeking through the entry gate at the model railroad museum.

A horn player near one of the fountains.  He sounded pretty good.

Pretty amazing details on many of these buildings.

North Bayshore Bikeway Bike Ride

This afternoon I took a bike ride heading north along the Bayshore Bikeway towards downtown San Diego.  But a couple of miles south of downtown it was getting late and I turned around and headed back.

I'll give it another try sometime but will ride the trolley downtown instead.  It sounds like I can take my bike on the trolley so I plan to bike from a downtown station over to Balboa Park for a look around.

The whole ride round trip was about 16 miles with about 10 of that on the Bayshore Bikeway.

Cowels Mountain - Barker Way Trail Head

I got just lost enough on this hike to make it interesting.  The picture below shows in red the rout I'd intended to take to the top and the blue line shows the track that I actually took.  Somehow on the way up I got diverted way over to the main summit trail.

The trailhead on Barker Way.

The trail was pretty well marked so I'm not sure how I got so confused about where I was supposed to be.

The up side to this rout up is that it was a lot less popular than the main trail that I hiked up last week.

McGinty Mountain Hike

Yesterday I hiked up McGinty Mountain about 15 miles east of San Diego and near the small town of  Jamul.  The round trip hike is about 3.5 miles with about a thousand foot elevation gain from the trail head to the summit.

On the way down we spotted a small smoke plume in the distance-- barely visible here behind and to the left of the mountains in the distance.

The smoke plume doubled in size as we stood around for a couple minutes while deciding to call 911.  There's a good chance that the fire was actually in Mexico since we're not far from the boarder here.  We did in fact end up calling 911 to report it but the last I checked it doesn't show up on the California wildfire webpage.  There is a fire that appears on a NOAA map just over the boarder in Mexico though.

.

Imperial Beach - Bay Rout Bikeway

Yesterday I took a bike ride over to the ocean to Imperial Beach at the south end of San Diego Bay.  A big part of the rout was on the Bay Rout Bikeway.

I rode a little over 20 miles through the course of the trip but the actual rout as mapped out above in about 8.5 miles one way.

The rout goes by the South Bay Salt Works.

South Bay Salt Works has been in operation since the 1870's and produces 75,000 tons of salt yearly.

The public fishing pier at the end of Evergreen Avenue in Imperial Beach.

The light wind looked just right for the beginner para-sailors.

IB is a popular place to surf but I guess not today.

There seemed to be a lot of people fishing from the pier but I didn't see anyone actually catch anything.