I’m back from a weekend of camping
A
mere fifteen miles from where I live is Malibu Creek State Park, with
miles of hiking trails and fire roads, as well as the location where
the tv series MASH was filmed.
About ten friends and I rented the group campsite, which is huge and
off on its own, for a quite reasonable $200, especially considering it
has running water, flush toilets, and even showers!
There’s
a lot of wildlife there, much more than in nearby Topanga State Park.
We saw deer, rabbit, coyote, groundhogs, skunks. On a day hike to the
MASH site, we stopped in at a dam built years ago by ranchers where you
can swim. The hillsides were filled with flowers, purple sage, white
sage, and lots more. The area below the dam is rock climber heaven,
there’s always teams of people on the rocks.
There’s also one unwelcome critter, a tick which can
carry Lyme disease. This sign, from a parking lot, is a good example of
how NOT to make a sign and how to scare the hell out of the unwary. The
“Actual size” at the bottom right of the sign actually points to a dot
the size of a pencil lead, but appears to point to the hugely enlarged
drawing!