My Eco-Crazy Roots are showing again

Condor in Pinnacles

Pinnacles National Monument is now Pinnacles National Park.
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Pinnacles is a forgotten destination inland from Big Sur and rarely visited.  I went with Greg and Nancy (we are going way back here) in the 1980's - pictures long lost to the break-ups of history.  But from these pictures, it seems nearly nothing has changed.
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One of the "cave" trails.

It is chaparral country,  so  it turns dry in the summer.  But there are a few natural lakes that hold precious water a little longer than most places.
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One of the cool parts of the park was a hike through "caves" (really fallen boulders) that took you to the pristine lakes.  We pulled up on one Saturday, early afternoon, and there was a massive crowd for the place - like 4 cars at the visitor center.
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California is blessed with spectacular National Parks farther East (Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon) - and Big Sur farther West - so Pinnacles National Monument / Park is a lonely place.
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This isolation is a gift of the park.  And has served it well since our visit.  It is now home to 31 California Condors that have been reintroduced into wild.  So, aside from people, this beauty if now home to the largest birds in North America.  Birds that need a lot of space - far from hunters.
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All that is to the good.  Now, seven miles to the south, in cattle country, they are about to do hydraulic fracking for oil.  There is a lot of  shale oil in California, and fracking is already used in many places.  The approvals will go through, and I hope that the local governments at least manage it well.  You can't really stop it.  But fracking uses a ton of water (something California doesn't have a ton of) and can disrupt ground aquifers that places like Pinnacles depends on.
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As for the area they want to drill the fracking wells in, well, it is not pretty.  Honestly, seven miles south of Pinnacles is a long stretch of nothing you would want to visit.  I have traveled through there and except for a riot of spring wildflowers maybe one week every three years, it spends most of the year ugly and smelly - so it they can find a way to Frack Drill without disrupting Pinnacles or the Condors - good on them.  If not, most of the population won't even notice - but I wish you could see it as it is now and as I hope it is in 20 years.
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Peaceful, quiet and subtly beautiful.

Afternoon at the end of one of the cave trails.

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The location in the middle of nowhere.