Wildlife Watching

Sunday afternoon instead of watching those Raiders give the game away.. which of course they did .. 20 something points in the fourth quarter.. we decided to take a little drive.

Sue loves to get out and try to spot some wildlife living along the road. The foothills are really really dry this year. We had a great trip up. We headed up to Snelling. It s a little hydro gold mine town pretty close to us. We decided to go up to Hornitos. Hornitos has an annual pilgrimage of the day of the dead to the top of their hill. Every year people put luminaries up and they walk to honor the dead that used to be buried above ground in oven like arrangements. Hornitos was a big town in the gold rush with nearly 15,000 inhabitants. Today there may be about 35 people that live there.

We drove through town and decided to continue on that road. It is a nice paved road and it was going in the right direction so up we went. It climbed and dipped and everywhere there were the stone fences of the post gold rush era. At the top of one of the hills Sue spotted three deer congregating under the trees. and little further along she said she saw some big birds. I backed up the car and I saw a beautiful wild turkey hen. She claimed that there was another just ahead of that one. What a sight!

We drove into the little way stations of Bear Valley and Mt. Bullion. This was the home base of Murietta. The bandit that robbed the stages full of gold as they headed out of the mills. We were on the big high way..still two lanes Hwy 49.

Our final stop along the way was to the town of Mariposa. There were many businesses not making it since the highway to Yosemite was under construction. We stopped and got a little bit of gas to make sure that we could get home.

The last bit of wildlife Sue noted was a coyote that she spotted on the plains headed in the Central valley from Planada. It looked like it had something in its mouth. Dinner for sure.

Have a great day.
Pat