Live in California all your life and if you love the out of doors there is a bird you’d want to seek out and observe: the California Condor. It’s big, it’s ugly, and to me it represents a different world that existed before human beings came along.
So where do you go to see a condor in the wild? My husband and I booked a room in Hollister and took off down Highway 25 to Pinnacles National Park. We’d never visited this park basically because it is out in the middle of no-place off the beaten path. That’s why the Condors like it.
The biggest bird in California this species almost went extinct before the last survivors in the wild were caught in the 1990s and placed in captive breeding programs in zoos. Every Condor in the park was zoo born or the offspring of those zoo programs. Today there are more than 560 Condors in California with 330 returned to the wild and 210 in captivity. These birds have recently been reintroduced to native lands along the Klamath River. Pinnacles has about 70 of them gliding through the peaks.
I felt sorry for the rangers, who must be asked 100 times and day “Where’s the best place to see a Condor?” We were asked by the ranger “Do you know what a turkey vulture looks like circling in the wind?” We nodded. “Well, look for something three times that size in the sky.” And sure enough, there they were, over the peaks.
With strong binoculars you could see the number tag every bird has attached, then use your smartphone to look up its age, parentage, siblings, and more on a webpage. I was amazed to see some birds were 26 years old! I was also fascinated to hear they would fly to Big Sur if a dead whale washed up as that was gourmet dining for them. They also visit Mt. Hamilton. There are additional groups of Condors in the Ventana Wilderness nearby.
Pinnacles National Park may be unique in that there is a east entrance off Highway 25 and a west entrance off Highway 101 but no road bisects the park. Why? A volcanic extrusion of magma forced up over 2,200’ of spires and pinnacles riddled with caves in the three miles through the center of the park. So if you want to see ALL the park, as we did, you have an hour long auto jaunt around the south end of the park to see the whole shebang. It’s worth it. In this area of California it’s usually rolling green hills and a gentle terrain full of ranches and farms. Then comes the Pinnacles sticking out. Where did they come from? I was fascinated to read that because of the San Andreas earthquake fault, just east of the park, you can find formations exactly like the park’s down in Lancaster 195 miles south! How many thousands of years have passed as the park’s landscape has inched along north leaving its original landscape behind. Mother Nature rocks!
The natural world inside the park is diverse and blessed with water. The Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s built stone buildings, campgrounds, trails and a fire lookout and their handiwork survives. There are Peregrin and Prairie Falcons, Golden Eagles and 14 species of birds, 70 different butterflies, 500 varieties of moths and, astoundingly, 400 documented species of bees. Add to that my favorite critter, bats, with 14 species there. Those pinnacles and caves provide lots of hiding and nesting places.
So if you’ve never visited Pinnacles National Park it is indeed worth a trek. And a final note about dining in Hollister. Being a fan of good beer our first night we dined at Mad Pursuit Brewery. It was the night of the play-offs for the Super Bowl and packed with 49’rs fans so we ate outdoors. Just minutes before the end of the game the power went out all over Hollister and if you ever want to hear a collective wail of despair, there it was. People rushed out with their cell phones to catch the score and luckily power returned in about a minute and everyone went back in to enjoy the end of the game.
Next night we ate at Chillin’ and Grillin’ Alehouse where they had 40 beers on tap from all over the state and an astounding 140 beers in bottles and cans from all over the USA. Talk about a decision crisis! I chose a good porter from Goose Island Brewing in Chicago. We would recommend these dining establishments to anyone.
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