I decided this week that I'd head up into the Angeles National Forest and see what I could see. I packed all the usual camera gear, and the drone, hoping to get some good overhead tree/mountain footage.
I left at 5:20 in the morning and made my way up to Palmdale mostly under cover of darkness, and then turned and headed east along the Pearblossom Highway. It's a pretty unremarkable stretch of road unless you enjoy endless dusty fields of Joshua trees.
Finally, I arrived at the turnoff to Highway 2, the Angeles Crest Highway. It twists and turns along the spine of the mountainous Angeles National Forest, and makes its way through a couple of small ski villages. I bet it's really beautiful when there's snow on it.
What I noticed first was the smell. I had my windows about halfway down, as temps were in the mid 60's even at this early hour. Suddenly, the sweet, sweet smell of forest was everywhere. Immediately, I was taken back to not only my childhood home in the mountains, but many, many camping trips. That fresh, clean, piney air is something I wish I could bottle.
After I passed through a couple small ski villages, the road started climbing pretty quickly. As I came around one corner, a sprawling view opened up to the right. I pulled over and decided to get the drone out and capture it!
A few minutes later, as I was cursing a blue streak and packing the drone back up, my mind was racing trying to figure out what was wrong. BOTH batteries were non-functional. And when you drop $115 per battery, they damn well better work. One of them has only flown ONE TIME.
(To digress for a moment, when I got home hours later, I found out that the batteries are programmed to de-charge themselves after three days of non-use. I charged these two weeks ago, when I thought I was going to make this same trip.)
So, I continued onward and upward, figuratively and quite literally. A few turns down the road, a healthy looking coyote ran across the road after a rabbit. I had the road entirely to myself, so I just jammed the brakes and whipped onto the shoulder, scrambling for my camera. I managed to get a couple shots of him as he trotted away. He didn't like me, and he didn't like that I interrupted his breakfast. Coyote 0, Bunny 1.
This sudden pulling over and taking pictures continued almost constantly for the next couple of hours. View after view after view. Really a lovely drive. I saw so many critters.
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| Some kind of blue jay maybe |
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| friendly fella |
I took a lot of scenery pics, but I'm trying to save those for Instagram. If you're not following my photo account @photo_bastard, then you should be.
About halfway through the drive, I spotted a kind of rocky canyon below the road on the right. It looked like there was a narrow ridge jutting out toward it, and it looked like a perfect hiking/exploring adventure. I pulled over, sunblocked up, grabbed my water and gear, and headed out.
It wasn't too far to the end, which was a massive crag of rock sticking up over the canyon floor. I put everything in my pockets so I could have both hands free, and climbed to the top. It was a great view! Here's a few seconds of phone video:
Though the view was good, what happened next was even more incredible. Two hawks showed up and began to fight. Now, not being any kind of expert on birds or their behaviors, I couldn't tell if these were rivals or lovers. Whatever was going on, there was a lot of flying around and screeching. It was really incredible. Because the outcropping I was sitting on wasn't very wide, and I don't enjoy falling to my death, I laid on my back with the camera pointed straight up and started shooting.
After I shot a billion pictures (focusing was really difficult) I packed up my stuff and got back on the road.
Gradually, as I got lower in elevation, and began to get nearer to Glendale, the scenery kind of tapered off. There were still mountains, but a majority of the trees were gone. In their place were charred, withered remains. The victims of one of our many wildfires. Sad.
And just like that, I was out of the clean mountain air and back into the smoggy, dirt and oil smelling city air. I'll definitely be going back, if only to get that drone footage I missed out on. Besides, according the map, there's another fork in that road that I didn't explore.
Til next time.
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