The Mt. Wilson Trail (Manzanita Ridge to the End)

(GPS: N 34° 13.355 W 118° 03.755)

Continuing from last time for the final stretch of the trail...

After climbing over the big rock in the middle of the trail, there was not much left to get to Manzanita Ridge. At the ridge the area opens up, and you can see way back down. The trail splits at this point to another area, but I just stayed on the main trail to Mt. Wilson. There is a bench waiting there if one wants to use it, but I kept going. In the following picture, it looks like you can go up on a trail to the left, but the main trail is just going straight.
It was at this point that morning, since I had just elevated above cloud level, that I finally saw the TV transmission towers on Mt. Wilson. It was really cool below, but now that I was above cloud level I started to really feel the sun.
Finally, I reached the old dirt toll road. It was around this point the two trail runners I saw earlier passed me as they were coming back down.
As I was walking on the road, I looked toward the east and saw Mt. Baldy far away in the background of this next picture.
It is at this point I started to encounter more man-made things. The dirt road I was on connects with another dirt road and, because of this, some hikers have been confused here. The hiking trail is not in this picture because it is more off to the right.
There was not too much further to go, but the final stretch of the hike started to wear me down a bit. This is because it was a lot warmer with the sun starting to beat me down. I started to worry a little. Everything that I had planned had worked out, but I did not have enough water for a hot hike going down. I knew the cool cloud cover was going to be gone before I could reach it on the way down. I did finally reach the end and was greeted with this monument:
Basically, the mountain is named after Don Benito Wilson (AKA Benjamin Davis Wilson). He was the one that had the trail built in the 1860's in his pursuit of good lumber. Oddly enough, Wilson is connected to a historical event that will show up in my Ramona series in a month or two.
Some trees block the views up there. The clouds made it look like I was looking into an ocean, and the one "island" in the background is Santiago Peak in the Santa Ana Mountains. What you don't see is that the Tv transmission towers were behind me, but that is not open to the public. And, it turns out there is a public parking lot just behind me too. That is the one thing I left out about this hike: you do not have to hike the trail to get to the top of Mt. Wilson. One can drive paved roads to get up to the parking lot. There were some construction workers doing some work there, and the parts were being flown in via helicopter.

I consider this a really good exercise hike in that it will get you in shape for elevation hiking. It is about 4,600 ft. in about 7 miles. I would consider going back just to hike only part of the trail for this. Most people do not go all the way to the top anyways. Keep in mind though, unless you like going uphill this is not a leisure hike.

Is it scenic? I have read a lot of people say this about this hike, but I feel the same way about this one in the way I feel about most southern California hikes. I do not consider the views along the way that impressive. We are not talking Sierra Nevada hiking here. This is why it is really difficult for me to post these type of hikes unless there is something historically significant about them. There are a lot I do for exercise, but it has been very rare for me to mention them on here because there is really nothing to them. This trail I thought was worth mentioning because of its history, and it was a "deep backcountry hike" for the people hiking it over a century ago. These days the big city is right below.

The Mt. Wilson Trail (Youtube Version)

Don Benito Wilson (Wikipedia article)

Mt. Wilson (Historical article by the Sierra Club)

Music for the video: Incompetech's The Whip Theme (Extended Version)

The Mt. Wilson Trail (Continuing To Orchard Camp)

(GPS: N 34° 11.930 W 118° 03.230)

Continuing from where I left off last time...

After being out in the open until First Water, one starts to encounter a little more tree cover for the middle part of the hike. If the hot sun is out then this is the part that it starts to get nice to get away from it.
Around the half-way point I encountered what is known as Orchard Camp. The following pictures are not that good, but I hope they give you a sense of what is going on at this historic site. Along the way some of the water stream drainage that one encounters is down below. So, there is about a 25 ft. drop here from where I was standing.
Then just to my left was this tree and what looks like the foundations to something.
When the Wilson Trail was being created there was a place built here known as the Halfway House. It was a construction camp made not only for creating and maintaining the trail, but for collecting tree wood from the mountain and brought back down. The Mt. Wilson trail was created with the intention that it would be a source for lumber. Later on two men, George Aiken and George Islip, planted a bunch of chestnut and fruit trees here. This is why it then became known as Orchard Camp. It was around 1890 that the buildings here were turned into a trail resort. It was very popular and, as author John Robinson notes (I link the book below), at the highpoint of 1911 over 40,000 people signed the register here. By 1940 the camp was abandoned.
Apparently, flooding from later years destroyed the buildings that were here and all that you can see these days is the foundations to them.
Since this was not my final goal, I did not spend much time here, but even today looks like it would make a nice picnic area for someone. There are those who do come to this point, eat some snacks, and then turn around. The trail switchbacks with the short U-turn as you go by Orchard Camp.
More switchbacks, more elevation, and continuing back into the canyon I finally noticed the light of the sun. I still had a lot of tree cover, but I was clearly past the elevation the clouds were covering that morning. What I had been told by a friend is that by this point of the hike you know you are very close to Manzanita Ridge when you encounter the huge boulder in the middle of the trail.
What looked to me like part of humanoid face actually took a little work to get around. You definitely want to cross over it to continue on with the trail. It is around this point that the views of the canyon start to open up and the tree cover ends.

The Mt. Wilson Trail (Youtube Version)

John Robinson's Orchard Camp section in Trails of the Angeles

Some old historic pictures of Orchard Camp. These are fun to look at since the area does not seem as overgrown as it does these days. It is hard to imagine sunlight hitting the area that I went to.

The Mt. Wilson Trail (Up to First Water)

(GPS: N34° 10.170 W 118° 02.940)

This begins a series of blogs that I have delayed for some time. When I did this one I was trying to kill two birds with one stone. One reason was to make sure my legs were in hiking shape at the time. The second reason was that the Mt. Wilson trail, and mountain itself, has important historical significance.

One thing I want to point out from the start is that this is one of those hikes that most of the pictures and video you will see were done on the way back down. Normally, I am forced to do this because I usually start hiking early in the morning before dawn. I always try show what can be seen with the best lighting available. However, on the day I did this southern California was going through what is known as "June Gloom" even though I did not do it in June.

Basically, there was a high amount of fog on the trail that morning. I could not see very far in any direction until I passed the cloud level later. It was fun to hike through since I could not see where I was going, but it was nothing worth taking pictures of since there was nothing to show. So, the following pictures are presented in a way that you can actually see what the trail is like, from the bottom to the top, even though it does not really show you what I experienced on the way up that morning.

The gps coordinates take you to the beginning of the Mt. Wilson trail near the historic Lizzie's Trail Inn and the Don Richardson House next to it. The inn was created in 1895 to serve the needs of hikers that used the popular trail during that era. The trail, as we know it, goes back to the mid-1860's. Lizzie's Trail Inn has an interesting history that I will link to below, and it is a museum today. For my purpose, I just parked on the street in front of it and passed by the inn on the left side to begin the trail.

The beginning of the hike passes a residential area. Some slight covering of trees like this, but it does not last for long.After gaining some elevation you can see some of interesting looking houses. Like I said, during the morning I could see none of this because of the fog. This was to my advantage though because the first third of the hike is out in the open where on a hot sunny day it could make one miserable. A nice dam making sure these houses and the rest of the city do not get flooded. After switching back and forth on the trail, gaining elevation, you might be able to see the Santa Anita racetrack. It can barely be seen slightly off to the right in the background. This is the direction the trail was going. It would eventually take me more off to the right side and higher up. Again, I could not see any of this in the morning. It really was kind of spooky, but I loved doing it at the time. Some people say you should be concerned about the drop offs on the trail. Honestly, that was not much of a concern for me on this one due to my own experiences on worse mountain trails. The trail is not that wide though. There was something about this that bothered me about this I knew I might have to face on the way down, but I will mention that later. After 1.5 miles I reached this sign telling me that I was at First Water. One can descend to the right to the stream below here. In fact, just hiking to this point is a workout in itself and people do come here just for this. I bypassed this point and continued. It was around this point that two young athletes ran right by me. Many people do run up and down this trail. I was just slow and steady on this 4,600 ft. elevation hike over 7 miles.

The Mt. Wilson Trail (Youtube Version)

Lizzie's Trail Inn (SanMadreNews.net)
Lizzie's Once Entertained Hikers (San Gabriel Tribune article)

Ramona Epic #13: Fiesta!

It is time for the fiesta at the rancho. Lots of singing and dancing take place. You will notice that Ramona is not present.

Check RamonEpic Youtube channel

Most of the footage is from 2011. You can tell because the woman with the big hat that won't sit still was right in front of me. Lol! ;)

Ramona Epic #12: Out of My Sight!

Even if you had not read the book, you probably knew this was coming.

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The Devil's Playground Cave (The Alabama Hills Series)

(GPS: N36° 36.205 W118° 07.110)

I had thought I covered this one before early on when I started this blog. I did mention the location at one point with a picture which I will list below, but I don't think I have ever covered it by itself. I will now. The above coordinates are within range, but not exact. They get you close, and then you just look for the entrance to the cave to the east.

In the Hopalong Cassidy movie, The Devil's Playground, the section that is often called Gene Autry Rock, Lone Ranger Canyon, etc. is known as the Devil's Playground. In the movie they make it look like this mysterious rocky place that one could easy get lost in. The scene near the end deals with Hoppy and friends trying to find this cave where stolen gold has been hidden. The guy in the cave in the picture below, Curley Evans, was setup by a Judge Morton who was after the gold. So, he was not really the bad guy in this story, but Hoppy had to find a way to show Curley they are on the same side and get the gold out of there before Judge Morton eventually would show up. The video linked below has this scene and shows the trick Hoppy used.

It turns out the "cave" is not a cave at all. All they did was add a black backdrop or drape behind the rock you see. By doing that they made it look like a dark entrance to a cave. It sure fooled me the first time I saw the movie. They do show the outside of our cave from inside of it. Looking back out in my picture. You may notice the trailer camper. For some reason this area that leads to Lone Ranger Canyon, just past the camper on the right, tends to get a lot vehicles that park right in important spots. I cannot tell you how many times I have come here only to realize that I would have to come back later, or on another day because of this. After the rescue, they are out in front of the cave. They are just sitting down where that small rock is on the ground. The rock just behind that is the one you see in the above picture.
Lone Pine Peak and Mt. Langley show up rather nicely outside of the cave.

The Devil's Playground Cave (Youtube Version)

Back in 2006, there was a Hallmark Christmas movie that used this perspective from the cave as the main character enters to spend the night. If I remember correctly, they used this shot, but combined the cave with another area.

Hallmark Christmas Blog from Dec. 2006

Important note: from now on if I have a new video of some area that I have covered in the blog before I am just going to link it in the old blog it is connected to. In the past, I was doing the temporary FYI blogs which announced them as they came out. I am not going to do that anymore, but I will announce each that I do via twitter, or if you are subscribed to or follow my video channels then you should see them as a new video. If not, then just check the channels once in a while for new videos. I just got tired of doing it the way I was doing. The only time I might create a new blog entry is if I have something new that I want to add, but a lot of the new videos I am doing I do not see the need to do that just yet.

Ramona Epic #11: Rancho Gaujome (Part 2)

In the last blog I noted that Cave Couts Jr. inherited the property. He is the one that claimed that Helen Hunt Jackson visited here over a period of weeks. He also reported that while she was here he was a partial invalid. Therefore, the adobe was not only the setting of the book, but Couts Jr. was the inspiration for Felipe in the novel. There is controversy over whether Ms. Jackson was actually here or not. However, this location has one advantage over the other rancho in making it fit as the setting in the book. I will mention this below.

From the carriage courtyard one can enter into the inner courtyard. The rooms surround the square-like courtyard. Like I stated in the last blog, the sewing room you see above was added on by Cave Couts Jr. for his wife. In the tour, they take you up there. Just imagine walking through the courtyard and into the room underneath it.This is the room under it. The stairway to the right was added on so one could get up there. The front door entrance they would have used is just past the stairway to the right.This is how it looks from up there looking down on the courtyard.Then looking over towards the chapel.Then turning around and looking out toward the field.Back down below. You can see where you can enter from the carriage courtyard toward the right side in the background.While the other rancho seems to fit the description of the book a little better, Rancho Gaujome does work too. The big advantage Rancho Gaujome has is it matches up better with the geography of the book. It makes more sense for it to be here near San Luis Rey than in Ventura due to the amount of time it would have taken to travel to the areas described in the novel. For example, to travel to Temecula to get the violin and then come back here a day later works. However, to travel from Ventura to Temecula and back in a day is a little more problematic when considering the horse travel for that time period on the routes they would have taken. There are other examples later on in the book like this.

Whether this is the rancho Ms. Jackson used, the other one, or a combination of both is not something I am too concerned with. It seems likely she took some ideas from some rancho and created her own for the book. In any case, this rancho does have a history for being considered a Ramona tourist spot and that is why I covered it.

In closing this one up let me mention a few things. When I went there I took a lot of pictures on that tour, but very little video. The reason being is that on the tour there were families with little kids and strollers. You can hear some of them in the video I did after the tour was over near the carriage courtyard. They were in the way a lot so it would not have worked out very well. Originally, because of this, the video was going to be a partial slide show. I decided against doing that.

Like the other rancho I covered, Rancho Guajome will be coming up again near the end of the series. At that point you will be seeing more of the rooms and other things I missed in this one. I did go back there again for a special occasion that was really fun.

Finally, the tour is good, and you get a lot more history about the place than what I explained here. The only thing I find odd at places like this is where they tell you that a $5 donation is needed to take the tour. It is not the money that bothers me, but the notion of a "forced donation". Just say "a fee" is needed for the tour and I would be okay with that . My guess is there is some loophole used by choosing the word "donation".

Ramona Epic #11: Rancho Guajome (Youtube Version)

A few other links about the rancho:

The County Of San Diego: Rancho Guajome Adobe

Rancho Guajome: A Legacy Preserved

Ramona Epic #11: Rancho Gaujome (Part 1)

(GPS: N33 14.000 W117 15.225)

It is time to talk about Rancho Guajome which, like the other rancho I covered, is considered to be the basis of the one used in Helen Hunt Jackson's book. I decided to split this one up into two parts as well. I will cover some of the real history in this one, and in the next blog will cover some of the fictional basis for why it too is considered the home of Ramona.

Originally, the land belonged to the San Luis Rey Mission. The mission is less than a few miles away. During the secularization of the missions in the Mexican period of California history, the land was granted to two indians: Jose and Andres Manuel. They sold their land to Don Abel Sterns. Sterns married into the Bandini family.

Cave Johnson Couts, born in Tennessee, a graduate of West Point, served in the frontier until after the Mexican War. He arrived in California during the years of 1849-1851. He married Ysidora Bandini. As a wedding gift he was given the land from his brother-in-law Sterns. Couts is the one who started building the adobe rancho you will see.

What you see above is the front of the adobe. You do not enter the adobe on this side though. The parking and gift shop the public enters on is on the other side. Much like the other rancho I visited, you have to take a docent led tour. I should note that the little room you see above was added on much later by the son of Cave Couts. It is the sewing room. It is nice in that you can see all around from above.
Much like the other rancho I visited, Couts built a chapel which he dedicated to his mother in 1868. What you see to the right is the dug out well and the cistern, which you can barely see, is right next to the chapel. Below, I am looking into the chapel. It was rebuilt in 1924. In the video I will be showing, I have a picture that shows that it looks much different than it is now.
This is the carriage courtyard. It is really the first area you encounter on the tour. What you see in the background is the where the blacksmith room is. The tree is supposedly from a seed or a part of the famous tree at the San Luis Rey Mission. I have covered that tree before when I talked about that mission. I link the relevant San Luis Rey Mission blogs below.
This is more from the carriage courtyard looking back to where you enter the rancho on the tour. The entrance to the right is where you enter the main courtyard. You can see the chapel in the background.
One thing Cave Couts was able to do was hire 300 of the local Indians to help build the 22 room adobe rancho. One of the problems Couts had was he had a fiery temper. He was indicted twice for whipping two Indians. One did die. He ended up killing two Hispanics and was charged for murder twice. Oddly enough, one of these murders took place at another Ramona site I will be covering eventually.

Much like the other rancho I covered, livestock was very important early on, but the drought issue of the 1860's forced the rancho to turn to agricultural products. When Couts died in 1874, Ysidora took over ownership of the rancho. When she died her 4th son Cave Couts Jr. took over.

I think I will stop with the historical points for this one. I will continue more with Rancho Guajome next time. The video will be coming, and I will come back and edit some of the wording like I normally do once I have the next blog up.

Ramona Epic #11: Rancho Guajome (Youtube Version)

This links to the San Luis Rey Mission blogs where the famous tree is covered:

San Luis Rey Mission Blogs

Ramona Epic #10: Alessandro Plays for Felipe

Happy Mother's Day!

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At this point in the play, there has been a lot of talk about Felipe, but this is the first time you get to see him. One of the downsides to the play is the role of Felipe is very small compared to what he does in the book. He is mostly sick at the beginning of the book and play which is what you see here. One thing that I should note is there was a different actor for Felipe in 2010 and 2011. You will notice it when I show some of the 2011 play videos that will be coming soon.

I am currently putting together my pictures for the next location for this series. So, I should have it up in a few days.

Ramona Epic #9: Alessandro Learns the Truth

In this part of the outdoor play Alessandro learns the secret about Ramona that not even she knows. Juan Canito, who works at the ranch and is also the narrator in the play, explains:

Check RamonEpic Youtube Channel.

Of course, in the book, the reader is told early on that Angus Phail is Ramona's real father. He married an Indian woman that gave birth to Ramona. To make a long story short, the child was eventually given to Phail's lost love Ramona Gonzaga. When Ramona Gonzaga died her sister, Senora Moreno Gonzaga, was given the child. So, she is part Scottish through her father and part Indian through her mother.

We are in the Ramona Pageant season right now. There is one Saturday left to view the play for this year. I did not go on opening day last year so I thought I would see what that was like this year. Well, it turned out to be a very hot day, and a bunch of the senior citizens were dropping like flies throughout the performance. They have paramedics all set up for this sort of thing. Even I was feeling the heat zap my energy that day.

I had wanted to video some scenes over for what I have been doing on here, and one of the key scenes I was trying to get was marred by a person passing out nearby. So, while the scene was going on I had people standing up, getting in the way, and paramedics coming through. I did keep the video going, but knew it was not something I will probably use. Although I may put that up in a separate video I do later on about the Ramona Bowl.

Also, at this performance, a lot more of the crowd near me was talking during parts of the play. One of the annoying things was there was a woman in front of me that had just purchased this big hat for the occasion. Before the play I heard her say her husband was not too thrilled about it. Well, it was good for her to block out the sun, but it was also blocking some of my view. You will notice it at times in the videos I use from this year.

Most of the same cast was here again this year. There was only one change that I will have to note in one of the upcoming videos. So, for this series, I am using both videos I took in 2010 and 2011.

Finally, I was about ten minutes from doing this write up on Sunday night when I saw that the White House was about to make a major announcement about a certain shame filled individual that is no longer on the planet. So, I ended up delaying this a few days. I have a couple of these I hope to catchup on in the next week or two along with the next location for this series. Although I have been really busy over the past month, the pace I am doing this is about right as we go along this year. There are some locations I wish I could do right now, but with this series it is important I build toward them in a chronological way.

Yellow Sky: The Mine (The Alabama Hills Series)

(GPS: N36 36.130 W118 06.865)

The mine in Yellow Star: Again, everything I have shown in the past few blogs is relatively close to each other. This is the furthest out from where the house and barn were in the movie, but no more than a five minute walk. All the Alabama Hills scenes were in the same area. Most movies that were filmed here go off to different areas for their scenes. As you can see, there really wasn't a mine there after all. Most of the time a company would put in fake mine entrance like that. The thing to point out in the above picture, and maybe makes more sense by watching the video I did, is some of the tailings they used in the movie are still there from Yellow Star. That is what you see on the ground to the right. The movie picture of Gregory Peck confronting Richard Widmark and the rest of his old gang is taken just off the right side of the mine. I had thought I had a more recent picture of this, but I could not find it. The most recent time I was here I just shot the video and did not take pictures. So, I had to find a lower quality one from an older camera I did some years back. This should do to show you what it looks like these days.

One thing I have not mentioned in this blog entry that you might be wondering about is the arrastra used in the movie. I have covered that before in an older blog that I will link below. It is hard to believe it has been three years since I did that. The video covers both the mine and the arrastra.

YS: The Arrastra (Youtube Version)

The Arrastra blog entry

So, if you have not seen the movie Yellow Sky, then I hope you do. The cinematography here was really well done. Budd Boetticher once said you just can't get a bad shot filming at the Alabama Hills. That's why it was such a popular movie destination back then. Somewhere on one of those imdb message boards I read sometime back was a criticism that made me role my eyes. It was that although the movie was really good in every area it was too bad it was filmed in black and white. Have no fear since some people quickly responded and ripped him for saying that. While it might have worked in color too, the black and white really gives it a film noir western look to it. There is a certain beauty and advantages to filming in black and white.

Finally, if you are ever at the Lone Pine Film Festival, then the Yellow Sky tour is one of the basic tours you can do. The guy who does it is really good and knowledgeable about the film and the locations.

Yellow Sky: The Waterhole (The Alabama Hills Series)

(GPS: N36 36.005 W118 06.765)

From where the house and barn were in Yellow Sky, one just moves along to the north to get to the waterhole used in the movie. The distance away is exactly like what you see in the movie.

As you can see, this really is not a waterhole at all, but it is what they used. You can see the rock Anne Baxter is heading to. In this picture you should be able to pick it out. What I am calling the "trail" to the waterhole is on the right. This is the scene where one of the outlaws grabs Anne, but then the younger outlaw tries to stop him. This is close. The rocks to the left are the guides to this.Gregory Peck comes and gives the outlaw a nice kick. Notice Richard Widmark standing behind the tree. BTW, all the trees you see appear to be just set pieces. Just like water was added to create this waterhole for the movie.Almost like this. This should give you an idea how the waterhole area was used in the movie.

YS: The Waterhole (Youtube Version)