Pinnacles National Park

    For my birthday I wanted to go looking for California condors down in Pinnacles National Park. The drive from Alameda would take a couple of hours and it was going to be a hot and difficult hike so we left the kids behind with Aunt Carol. Pinnacles is also the newest National Park in the system so it would be great to cross it off of my list.

    It was a nice drive and just outside of the park I found a prairie falcon darting around a field. By the time I had pulled over, it had found some sort of rodent and dove to the ground. We got to watch for a couple of minutes as it had breakfast. a covey of quails ran across the road not far away.

    Once in the park, we had a little issue reading the map and started our hike from the wrong parking lot. This added almost three miles to where I wanted to be in the mountains and the day was quickly heating up. But the birds were everywhere as we walked up a canyon. Once we got to the trail that led to the condor overlook all we could do was hustle from one shady tree to the next.

    We never did see a condor but since they're part of a breeding program due to their endangered status I wouldn't have been able to count them anyway. Just would have been cool to see the biggest bird species in the country soaring around. As a consolation I saw plenty of California scrub-jays, California quail, California thrashers, and California towhees. Not quite as good as a California condor though!

    I left Adrienne on a bench at the upper parking area and hiked the rest of the way back to the car. I don't think I've ever hiked in such heat before and it was a brutal few miles. I was very happy to see the car and enjoyed the air conditioning as I drove to pick up Adrienne. It was definitely an adventure and I couldn't ask for anything more for my birthday!