Cruisin With The Cuddies: Paicines, CA, Pinnacles National Park and earthquakes, oh my.

Our next camping experience took us away from the Coast. We were staying in a very small town named Paicines in California. The population there was 663. We took side trips to Monterrey and Santa Cruz, but we were definitely inland. The landscape here, as in most of this part of California is very dry, looks like they are in a desperate need for rain. Look how brown the ground is in the photo below, this was taken at our campground. It was like that all over Central California. If it wasn't an agricultural area, there was dead grass everywhere. I don't mean to dis California, but the dry grass makes you think of fires. It didn't help that we receive a notice at our campground the first day we were there that we may have our power turned off because of the anticipated Santa Ana winds. They didn't turn our power off, but areas around us were effected. And while I am not dissing California, we were paying $4.20 a gallon for gas. Makes traveling around the state very expensive.

Oh, and one more thing, while we were staying in Paicines, we felt three earthquakes. They were minor earthquakes, but at 4.7, we though someone crashed into our RV when it struck.

OK, I'm done complaining. Now to the positive fun stuff. Pinnacles National Park was about 30 miles away. With a goal of seeing as many national parks as possible, we had to go. It is one of the newest National Parks, as it was designated as such in 2012, after being a National Monument since 1908. We were unfamiliar with this park, before our arrival to the area. The photo below shows the namesake pinnacles.

Upon arrival we checked into the Visitors Center. It was there we were told that the things to do here included hiking or hiking. We choose to go hiking to Bear Gulch Cave. We were told we could take the hike and exit the cave at the other end and hike down a different path along the reservoir. What they didn't tell us was we would have to crawl out a two foot wide opening for about 6 feet to exit the cave. Unfortunately, there were no signs near that opening telling us that that was the way out, and since they couldn't possibly consider that space the exit, and there was a gate over another exit saying closed, we decided to walk back out of the cave. An fun adventure it was, fortunately Dave remembered to bring flashlights, as there weren't lights in the cave. It was an adventurous hike which we enjoyed. We had the cave to ourselves until we were on our way out. This isn't what we normally think of as a cave, it is in fact formed from boulders falling down on top of each other creating openings. I'm glad we went before we felt the first earthquake, or we may have chosen a different path.