Turkey Vulture

Today was a day for hiking. We hiked four trails, Pa’us, Grotto, Weeping Walls and Emerald Pools. They were all easy, but they added up. Now, we’re tired.

We’ve seen lots of wildlife here and lots of not so wildlife. Deer regularly circulate through the campground. The squirrels are the worst. We’ve seen hundreds of lizards and many varieties of birds. We saw a rather tame turkey at Weeping Walls. It was just hanging around the parking lot.

Our most unusual sighting occurred after last night’s ranger talk. We were walking back to camp in the dark and glimpsed a creature crossing the main parking lot, which at that hour was pretty empty. We’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities. It was either a gray fox or a ring-tailed cat, which is actually in the raccoon family. The rangers confirmed to us that both species are regularly seen where we saw our mystery beast. Tonight we’ll bring a camera.