Malibu Creek State Park, Fall in California, and the Backbone Trail

There were some nice fall colors this past year just before the winter solstice along Malibu Creek where Piuma road meets the canyon. This is the spot where you can find some of the best fall colors in all of the Santa Monica Mountains. The colors have mostly faded by now but the hiking weather has been ideal. The kind of weather that makes climbing hundreds of feet vertically on the backbone trail seem almost like a walk in the park, or kind of like effortlessly floating the thermals just as the Turkey Vultures do, well sort of. The views on the first day of 2018 were quite spectacular too and Malibu Canyon is still charming after all these years.

One day this year I hope to make the grand tour of Malibu Creek State Park, a roughly 17 mile loop that takes in a good chunk of the upper park, and travels along one of the most scenic sections of the backbone trail.

SRI October 2017

Santa Rosa Island October 2017

Points North Fall 2015

Old Boney Trail

The Impaler

Logger Head Shrikes are rarely seen in Ventura County these days. Due to habitat loss and fragmentation from development theses little ferocious birds are going the way of the dodo in parts of California. Today was my first confirmed sighting. Shrikes are Impalers, in that they impale their prey to branches, barbwire, etc and then start to feed.

Birds pictured:

Logger Head Shrike 

Northern Harrier

Greater Roadrunner

Observed but Not Pictured:

Says Phoebe

Black Phoebe

American Kestrel

White Tailed Kite

Red Shouldered Hawk

Rancho Sierra Vista November 2011

Tablas del Otono

I was down in Encinitas this past weekend visiting some good friends and since the new Surfy Surfy store is right there in Leucadia I had to make a stop by to see what they had in stock. I knew that I if walked in there it would be extremely hard to resist walking out of there without una tabla nueva. So the super cosmic Pavel Creek Fish quad airbrushed by Moonlight Glassing's resident astral artist Peter St. Pierre in the middle is what I walked out with. Muchas gracias goes out to JP St. Pierre at the very cool Surfy store and the whole Moonlight crew for putting together such fine functional art for the masses to consume.

All boards in my current quiver and the Liddle is on loan from the gracious Warm Jet.

Painting with light and desert vision quest in Joshua Tree National Park a couple of weeks ago.

Point n Shoot Sunset