El Encanto Inn

Crystal Lake, Highway 39

Funny how fickle I can be.  One day I am in love with the South Bay and the next I am in love with the San Gabriel Mountain range.

This is a new bridge that connects the parking lot at West Fork to the West Fork asphalt bike lane that runs along the south side of the river.  This bridge disappointed me.  First, the expense.  Not sure if this was paid for through the national forest service or something that the city of Azusa pawned off on the National Forest Service. Regardless, it is stupid.  Second, it's a crossing bridge . . . over a creek.  It discourages kids from developing their rock-hopping legs, balancing, and agility.  Silly.  But I did notice that this bridge is perfect for folks who are not so much the outdoorsie type, for whom just a simple walk across the bridge to the other side of the creek is just perfect.  These people will be more apt to buy the Adventure Passes sold by the forest service and Azusa.  I don't like it because it alters the nature of the place.

I need to clean my windshield.

There are three deer in this shot.  One on the left grazing.  A second one in the middle also grazing. And a baby deer to the far right turning its head back at me and my car, its ears raised high above its head.

Fond memories of picnics with friends from years ago.

This cafe had a kitchen, a store with lots of canned goods as you would expect a store in the woods to have, and a small dining area with three tables and counter space up against the store's windows.  The owner is Adam Samrah, and he was quite friendly.  He enjoyed talking to visitors.  He is a very good cook.  His wife made a terrific banana-nut bread that I tried with a cup of coffee.  It was like heaven, a heavenly breakfast.  He also rents cabins.  See here.  To stay at a camping site on teh campgrounds, he charges $12 a night.  Very reasonable.  He told me that he was from Cypress. That's right, Cypress.  He talked about how he was shut down following the fires, shut down for ten years at one point.

The blue jay perched at the right on this rock was playing hide-n-seek with me as I stood a few feet from him.  Not unusual and certainly not unique; just that I found it to be funny.

It was a beautiful fall morning at Crystal Lake.

Angeles Crest Highway, Hwy 2, is still closed to through traffic.  It has been closed for as long as I can remember which goes all the back to 1977 when they had half the mountain slide down onto the road, closing it for many years.  And here it is still closed.  Perhaps it is closed for another reason, given the probability that the forest service perhaps actually fixed the road from that 1977 storm.

Paul Parker and I fished this dam a score of times.  Sometimes with Tim Mullins, sometimes with his dad or another friend of Paul's.  We'd scale down the mountainside to that open space there at the center between the two ridges.  We caught a lot of fish over the years.  And we made several burger and beer runs at midday on behalf of the rest of the crew.  That is real cameraderie.