Category Archives: Princess Rosebud

Wolves, Bears, Bison, Moose, Elk, and more…

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Please join me in stopping the insane murders of these magnificent creatures.

Please join me in stopping the insane murders of these magnificent creatures.

Hello!

We’re back from our journey — a circuitous route from SoCal to Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, and the Great Basin National Park.

I kept a journal to record every special moment of our vacation.

We hiked, we kayaked, we camped.

We were in a bison traffic jam.

The main purpose of our trip was to fulfill my desire to see wolves in the wild — and we were so lucky to view at least eight of the famous Lamar Valley wolf pack in Yellowstone, including the magnificent 755.

I’m even more passionate about stopping the ridiculous murder of wolves.

We met dedicated park rangers everywhere we went.

The Grand Tetons are AMAZING–we camped, hiked, and kayaked at Jenny Lake.

Our last day at the Great Basin National Park was breathtaking and exciting and scary — thunder, lightening, rain, hail, sleet, and snow; hiking at 10,000 feet. The temp went from the mid-eighties to low thirties in about an hour. AMAZING.

I’ll be downloading pics and writing about it all —

(We had tentative plans to meet up with another blogger in Idaho as we drove through, but we had stayed an extra day in the Tetons ‘cos it was so amazing and I was feeling kinda bad from the heat, so we couldn’t make it happen. Sorry, it would have been fun)

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Hiking in Julian

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Broken wrist notwithstanding, it was time for a back-to-nature adventure; this time a seven plus-mile, four-hour walk.

We drove up to our local mountain to the beautiful and historic town of Julian to hike the Santa Ysabel Open Space Preserve, East End. The Cedar Fire in 2003 caused some damage that’s visible in a few burnt out trees, but most of it was spared.

Santa Ysabel East End Open Space PreserveTo get to the starting point from Julian, drive two miles north on Farmer Road to Wynola Road, jog briefly right, and turn left to remain on Farmer Road. Continue 1.2 miles north to the Santa Ysabel Open Space Preserve staging area on the left.

Start heading west, alongside the upper reaches of Santa Ysabel Creek, on the Kanaka Loop Trail. This part of the trail doubles as a segment of the unfinished Coast to Crest Trail, which will ultimately stretch all the way to the coast at Del Mar. It would be so cool to hike that one day.

Right away you’ll notice cattle — as in COWS — grazing on the grassy hillsides overlooking the creek. Another not-quite-natural occurrence is the appearance of large flocks of wild turkeys. The 20,000 or so turkeys now roaming the Julian-Cuyamaca area descended from an initial population of about 300 that hunting enthusiasts  animal murderers introduced in 1993.

I forgot my camera in the car, so here’s my embarassingly poor rendering of the cows and turkeys we saw.

Don't I draw like I'm five-years-old?

Artist: Princess Rosebud …Don’t I draw like I’m five-years-old? Obviously, both sides of my brain are not evolved equally.  It’s a good thing I don’t shop like I draw.

We saw sycamores, black oaks, and blackberry thickets. It’s a very active site for mountain lions – prints were everywhere along with a lot of coyote and mule deer scat.

The cows have an amazing playground; why they chose to sit in the middle of the trail along the entire route and either give us dirty looks or cause us to walk into the brush to get out of their way or in one case, CHASE US, I have no idea. They are VERY large and appear malevolent as if they know how big they are and were laughing with each other at my FEARFUL screams of “Go away, go away, shoo, shoo, get out of here, you stupid Cow!”

Geez, we don’t even eat meat, so they should have been extra nice to us, don’t you agree?

If I had my camera, I would have taken pics like this…

Kanaka Loop

Other people’s pics

It was a beautiful hike, not too strenuous for my still-healing broken wrist, and we decided to drive the few miles into Julian and walk around like tourists. Julian is an old mining town and is quaint and cute. We went into a one hundred year old soda shop and had a yummy sarsaparilla.

Now I have my camera again.

We gave this guy a few dollars for his animal rescue, ‘cos his little mini-pony was adorable. 

minipony

Carriage ride
Julian realty
Our fun day ended with a stop at a farm stand. Twenty-five avocados for $5.00. Yay! Guess who’s making guacamole?
avocados

Fall + Break: Another Avoidable Injury

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Triquetral avulsion fracture.

That’s the name of the break I sustained.xray

I slipped and fell in this ditch Sunday evening in our upper yard as I was looking for coyotes in the hill on the other side of our property.

I was wearing flip flops (not smart) and my hand broke my fall, but then I broke my hand.ditchAt first I thought it was just a sprain or torn ligaments, but the pain was really, really bad, so I had it X-rayed and the doc confirmed my suspicions.

I’m in a removable cast for about six weeks — no weightlifting but I can do anything else that doesn’t cause pain.

My hand is super swollen and all bruised up, too.

brokenhand

I might not be able to lift weights, but there’s nothing to prevent me from shopping!

I never did see any coyotes but I snapped a pic of this amazing hawk in our eucalyptus tree.

hawktree2

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UK SPK™

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Since my son met and married a girl from London, his language has become peppered with UK SPK™, which I define as words and phrases he’s appropriated from his wife, her family, and friends. Because I like to be as trendy and hip as he is, if only to annoy him, I have incorporated quite a few into my daily life.

The first day he said jumper instead of sweater, I had to remind him that he holds an American passport and he was born and raised on the beach in SoCal.  And the day he told me he’d ring me on his mobile I was gobsmacked (amazed). My DIL says things all the time that I need her to translate for me. When we go shopping, she’ll look at an outfit or whatever, and say it’s naff which means tacky and def something I shouldn’t be caught dead in. Mutton dressed like lamb is a veiled way to communicate to me that the hoochie momma spandex-covered-in-rhinestones dress I picked out for myself is too young looking for my advanced years. I always say totes adorbs because Stacy from What Not To Wear says it, but it was born in the UK.  Of course, that’s totally adorable, right? Everyone knows they say boot and mean trunk, and flatmate is roommate, but did you know that knackered means tired? Pissed isn’t angry, it’s drinking too much alcohol, and to whinge is to whine. The one that really confused me for the longest time was biscuit, which to me is flour and shortening, baked in the oven and slathered in butter, but to Brits it’s a cookie, of all things! Oh, and DIL says, “I reckon” a lot, which I thought was funny ‘cos it’s kind of a Southern thang, but apparently it’s a well-used phrase they’ve appropriated from us and are now giving back!

The day my child picks up a British accent, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. Prob wave an American flag back and forth in front of him until he once again sounds like the California boy he is!

Here’s a few more I hear on a regular basis:

bin=trash can

ginger= red hair

gobsmacked= amazed, gob is mouth

sorted=figured out

splash out=spend a lot

suss it out= figure it out

I know there are many more -isms, but I’m saving some for Part 2 one day. Unless everyone stops speaking to me.

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