Lots of wild animals here at Mom’s house

Our bus is parked about 150 yards up from My Mom’s house. It’s been a great visit for us all, and the kids are loving this time with Grandma.
I was happy to see our friends Mellissa, Ryan and their kids come to visit us here in Crestline a week ago. It was fun to see the kids play together again. They were in Joyschool (a neighborhood preschool, taught by the moms) together when we lived in Poway.

Early Wednesday morning Isabel saw two quail through the window of the bus. Sierra, Ben and Eva came to the window and saw them too. I didn’t see the quail then but did see them Friday. These mountain quails are bigger than the ones I see around San Diego area.

Thursday I was sitting in the slide out talking to Ryan. Ryan was facing me and all the sudden he blurted out "hey, there is a bear out there". I turned around and, no kidding, there was a huge bear lumbering up the hill toward the bus. We called out to all the kids and they came over to see it. Every one saw the bear through the big windows of our slide out. The kids were so excited, they were yelling and talking loud. Shhhh.... be quiet guys.... but hey, can’t really blame them for being excited. The bear heard our noise and stopped. He looked at us but then went on about his business of walking slowly toward the bus. No one had a camera at hand so I wanted to try the video camera. I tried to be quite as I opened the window but the click noise of the window latch made the bear move away. It’s rare to see bears up here. I have only seen one about five times in the last 40 years. In the past 10 or 15 years Mom has seen bears more often than when I lived here. This was by far the biggest bear I have seen up here.

I was walking down the dirt road to Mom’s when I saw this cat dashing behind the big fir tree over to an old tree log. It looked much bigger than a bobcat and I figured it was a mountain lion, it made my heart beat a bit faster. It crawled up on top of the old log and bounced down on the other side. Then it crept up along the side of the log. The cat must have been hunting something judging from the way it was moving. As it came to the end of the log it faced me, I was about 30 yards away, I could see the toughs of fur on its face. It was obvious that this was a bobcat. The tail was short, maybe four or six inches long. I stood as still as possible. After a few seconds of staring at me he went on about his searching. I slowly moved away and back to the bus to get the camera but it was too late. By the time I came back it was gone.

On Monday the kids also saw a coyote walking down by Mom’s house. It has been so cool to see so many animals! I am especially pleased that everyone was able to see the big bear.

Bill