EISPIRATEN

We hiked a 13 mile loop around Laguna Coast Wilderness Park today. Now, I didn't take my camera because the 8 year old batteries have stopped holding a charge for very long. I don't want to replace them as I am buying a new NEX7 as soon as production ramps up. The Sony factory that was making them went underwater during the Thailand floods last year. Right now, they are a little hard to find since only a handful are shipping from a new facility.

As we were returning to the car at 4:30PM maybe only 100 feet from the trailhead, there was a bobcat sitting in the middle of the trail. Sh!t, sh!t what a time to be without a camera. I pressed the cell phone camera into service. The cat was a distance away and the puny phone camera enlarges to a blur. For what they are worth, I post the original and a couple of crops here. The building in the background is the Nix Nature Center. In 15 years of hiking, this is only the third bobcat that we have seen.

Nice catch, they are very elusive - I've only see two in 7 years, one in SD county parking at a PCT trailhead, came around the corner and almost hit him on a dirt road and just above the Portal on Whitney, one ran across the rocks that are at a 50 degree angle parallel with upper falls, he/she never missed a beat and made it look easy to be running across sheer granite - both gone faster than you can saw "Boooobcaaat"

We had one walk across our deck here in Newport Beach a few weeks back. There's a well documented case of "Babe" who lives in the Backbay area of Newport Beach: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2 ... rhood.html