Journeys: Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve, California - Hiking

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve, California - Hiking

Roger and I spent several days in San Diego, California to take advantage of an expiring airline companion pass and to enjoy some relaxing vacation time. We spent one full day driving up the coast, stopping at several beach towns along the way as we made our way north. Solana Beach was my favorite with it's low key, non touristy feel, and San Clemente was a close second with its fun downtown shopping and dining district.

Enjoying the ocean near Solana Beach

Culture Brewing Company

We spent Sunday in the Temecula wine country region, enjoying the scenic vineyards and tasting some good wines. Later in the day, we met up with Roger's nephew for a sunset hike around the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve.

Temecula wine country

Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve

Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve

On Monday, we spent the day hiking around Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. The reserve is a gorgeous coastal park near La Jolla, CA that protects several groves of rare Torrey pine trees and offers spectacular views of the ocean and adjacent cliffs. Although wildly popular, we were able to find some solitude along the many trails that traverse the coastal plateau.

Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve

Torrey pines

Hiking with Roger at Torrey Pines

Interesting cliff formations

Torrey pines

Flowering yucca

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards"

-- Edward Abbey

"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. "

-- John Muir

"To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."

-- Terry Tempest Williams

"There may be people who feel no need for nature. They are fortunate, perhaps. But for those of us who feel otherwise, who feel something is missing unless we can hike across land disturbed only by our footsteps or see creatures roaming freely as they have always done, we are sure there should be wilderness. Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis for our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?"

-- Margaret E. Murie

"I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?"

-- Everett Ruess