Palomar Mountain Trip (Jan 2008)

January 27th, 2008, after a week of rainfall, Kat and I decided it was a good time to head up to Palomar Mountain and go frolic in the snow. It's about an hour and a half drive from my house, through Escondido and up past the native american reservations (we passed four casinos during this trip).

At the peak of the mountain is the Hall Observatory, previously the largest land based telescope in the United States, at 200 inches in length. The road we took to get up to the station was carved as they hauled the 20 ton lens up the slope. Sadly, Kat was so cold that she didn't walk up to the telescope itself, so I don't have any photos of it.

Last fall fires threatened most of San Diego County. The south side of Palomar Mountain recieved quite a bit of scorching, and we saw a lot of burned trees along the road. At one point we passed a man rebuilding the wood fence around his property. At the end of the gallery are several photos of the burned areas.