Camping in Palomar Mountain State Park

 This weekend, we went camping in the woods for the first time this year. The snow melted in the mountains back in April, and what with my new job, this was the first weekend we manged to secure a spot. 

We went to a new area, about halfway to San Diego, called Palomar Mountain State Park. It's quite a small area, but pretty all the same. The campground we'd found was very small, there was no-one to sign us in and there were only twenty sites. There were no showers and the toilets were pit toilets (just a bowl over an open pit). We had a tap by our site, and it was operated with a pump!

Our site was hard to find at first, but we eventually found it and parked. We had to carry all of our equipment up a little hill to get it to the campsite, but once we were up there, it was super secluded and we couldn't see any other site around us. It was a very rural site compared to others we've been to, but we loved how in the middle of the woods it was, and that we had so much space to ourselves.  

We were number 1

We'd driven up Friday evening after work, and we arrived about half an hour before sunset. We managed to get the tent set up and start collecting some firewood, but by the time we were ready to light the fire, it was already dark. 

That evening, we sat by the fire, cooking sausages and toasting marshmallows. While we were cooking, I realised we'd forgotten the sleeping bags! It was too late to go back and get them, especially as the route home included 45 minutes down an unlit mountain road, but fortunately, we'd played it safe and brought all of our layers and extra blankets we used when we went camping in the winter, so we were able to wrap up warm enough for a June night. It still would have been more comfortable with the sleeping bags though!

In the morning, we cooked some porridge and hot chocolate and set off for our hike. There were no big peak hikes in the area, but there was a nice trail through the wilderness to the observatory. The sun was already warm and we went out in shorts, despite how cold it had been in the night. Unfortunately, the observatory was closed, but it was a nice walk and it took us about three hours to get there and back. 

On the way back, we stopped to drink some water and were chatting away when I looked over Mitchell's shoulder and saw a deer stood completely still, staring at us! It stood still long enough for me to get my camera out of my backpack and start taking some pictures, before it carefully plodded away.

We ate our lunch back at the campsite, then found a nice sunny rock to sit on and read our books for a little while. Later in the afternoon, we took the trail around the campground. It was hard to find the start of the trail, it seemed to start right from the centre of our campsite, and we hadn't seen anyone use it while we had been there. The trail itself was very pretty with tall trees and lots of long grass, and we didn't see anyone else on it. 

We got back and started to collect more firewood to cook our dinner. We started pretty early, so we had to go back and search twice more to keep it going until we went to bed. We cooked the rest of the sausages and A LOT of s'mores that night. It started to feel a bit colder that night as the sun set, so we went to bed early so that we could be asleep before it got too cold. 

In the morning, we cooked our breakfast and then packed up to go home. It took us about an hour and a half to get home, and we could see the sea from the mountain road. It was a very nice, very chilled out trip, and while there wasn't a lot to see there, the campground was so nice, and so empty, we might go back sometime just to enjoy a night under the stars. 

All our love,

Emily and Mitchell

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