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National Park Service

Here is another blog praising one of the rare and fewer privileges of being in America.  The NPS or National Park Service.  If there are any institutions that allow unfettered access to the great outdoors inspite of the overall degradation of natural habitats due to largesse of first world consumer habits it is this.  Due in part of the foresight of some thinkers (Roosevelt in 1908) these parks provide reserved wild spaces for a common man to come and enjoy.

We visited a place not far from home in the central California region, right alongside the San Andreas fault line - Pinnacles National Park.

It is the western remnant of a long extinct volcano that was split by this fault line aka the massive quaking that happened as two plates rubbed with the other half down near the Los Angeles basin some 200 miles south.

Unique parts of this park include the Talus Caves (which are caves formed when boulders fall into a ravine creating a cave) as well as a dam that creates a reservoir primarily filled by rain water that collects in it.

It offers excellent surfaces for rock climbers as well.




Bunch of wild flora and fauna including large eared bats and woodpeckers abound.

Red Headed Woodpecker
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