Arroyo & Houses On the Hill

We - the royal we - remember before there was a road and hiking was a solitary activity. Now, with a parking lot and nearly 1,000 feet of suburb between it and "the road," it's a strange no-man's land of bikers, hikers and baby strollers.

The houses that border the arroyo, a huge drainage that, were it to flow, could take out a significant portion of downstream homes, are largely nondescript. It was here i found an assortment of shells.

The view west, away from the mountains.

The humble cottages that constitute the middle-class ghetto.

To the south there are a couple of mid-sized mansions perched on the hills. Nothing like the mega homesof the 19th-century robber barons's places on what used to be Bratenahl at Cleveland, Ohio, but respectable enough to demonstrate having "arrived." One wishes they'd bought the land and, as I saw once in California, posted signs inviting people to hike. 

The houses on the hill.

Bratenahl home of late 1800s.

Cholla; vestige of an earlier time.

The even humbler cottages on the south side.

The find!

The pod.

Shells & pod