2012-04-22 33 -117

Location

Geohash Droid reports the hashpoint to be just outside Palomar Mountain State Park off the 79 near Temecula, CA. It appears that the hashpoint may be accessed through the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony. (http://dorlandartscolony.org)

Participants

Plans

I always check the hashpoints on camping weekends. This weekend we were camping at Vail Lake Resort off the 79 outside of Temecula, CA. The hashpoint was close by on the return trip.

Since this was family camp my wife had driven out on Saturday to join us. Rather than wait around on Sunday while I packed the van she returned home with the boys freeing me to do a little detouring on the way home.

Expedition

scerruti

Cell coverage is a little spotty in this neck of the woods, in addition my primary device, a Galaxy Nexus, was acting a little funny. Nonetheless I headed out to where I remembered the hashpoint to be and seeing the sign for the Doorland Mountain Arts Colony turned in and headed up the hill.

I stopped and spoke with the caretaker to get permission to wander about. He warned me about rattlesnakes and mentioned that although it is private property it was okay if I was just going to wander about waving my phone around.

There was a road that headed uphill in promising direction. I headed up the road until I was withing 400 meters of the point. However there was a deep gully and high ridge to cross and I was not willing to head unarmed into the bush on my own.

When I attempted to upload a photo from the spot I noticed I had 5 bars of 4G signal and yet no data signal. I also noticed a suspicious humming noise. Apparently the road had been constructed to build a cell phone tower. I rebooted my phone and uploaded a picture with coordinates. Due to the stupid nature of my phone the picture is marked with inaccurate coordinates. Hopefully one of my other pictures is marked more accurately.

Personal Note: I am getting really frustrated with my phone recording entirely incorrect coordinates for images.

Hijackal

Hijackal got close to the hash around 10 am, and does not have much to add to Scerruti's report - the final 400m were just too hard. He went for a hike on better trails in similar territory and saw two rattlesnakes on the clear trail - good thing neither Scerruti nor Hijackal ventured into the bushes surrounding the hash.

Photos

Entrance to Dorland Mountain Arts Colony
Land acquired with help of The Nature Conservancy
As close as I can get. @33.4669,-117.0202 My images are getting geotagged incorrectly.
Panoramic shot from closest approach to hashpoint.

The pictures in this gallery were taken in a sculpture garden/workshop located at Vail Lake Resort in Temecula, CA. I was hoping that I would get to use them to earn the Raptor Geohash achievement, alas I was unable to achieve the hash point. However, if you would like your own raptor you may contact the sculptor Ricardo A. Breceda and see more of his work on his website http://ricardoabreceda.com/