From the Expo our decision is to explore at least a couple natural spots. We choose one in town, Temecula Creek Trail Park, and one outside so on we go to find the parking. The whole area is an HOA with many restricted routes but we find the correct route to the parking lot with our helper, Google Maps. In the parking lot a child suddenly hails us and asks if we have seen her dog and if not if we can keep an eye out for it, something weird is happening everywhere today. We promise that we will keep an eye out and on the trail we go. It is now on the warm side with no cloud cover and no trees on this stretch but preferable to the rain on the previous day.
We find caches along the way but the major reason we chose this stretch is due to the number of birds that can be seen. We are especially happy to see a Black Phoebe, common but not seen by us this year yey.
However the bonus bird appears after the maintained trail ends and we enter the wash and follow some spur trails. It is a California Red-shouldered Hawk watching us, then waving at us and then finally deciding it had enough and leaving.
The trails through the wash are quite nice and we could continue on them for some time but unfortunately we have to make it to Phoenix today so reluctantly we decide to turn around after finding one more cache.
We continue seeing lots of birds, mostly same species, likely attracted by the running water coming from the overflow channel that we have to cross. And then we are back in the parking lot with no dog and on we go, next we will stop in the mountains at Ramona Trailhead, our last stop of the trip.
