{"id":166,"date":"2016-05-03T21:49:35","date_gmt":"2016-05-03T21:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lesleymills.co.uk\/journal\/?p=166"},"modified":"2016-05-03T21:56:55","modified_gmt":"2016-05-03T21:56:55","slug":"on-the-trail-of-the-lonesome-pine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesleymills.co.uk\/journal\/on-the-trail-of-the-lonesome-pine\/","title":{"rendered":"On the trail of the lonesome pine"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had an early start this morning, deciding to drive the length of Skyline Drive to see what we could see, so having made ourselves gorgeous we set off, not even pausing for food. \u00a0That didn’t last long, so ten miles along the trail we pulled in for breakfast, and also to fill the car with fuel. \u00a0That’s another story I haven’t mentioned yet, the car. \u00a0We’ve ended up with anothe SUV, but not as huge as the one we had in California.<\/p>\n

Anyway, we had a reasonable brekkies, and set off, very little traffic, misty and murky, stopping to admire the spectacular views along the way. \u00a0We saw some birds of prey (they may have been buzzards, but Liz has those photos, mine are rubbish). The mists gradually gave way to some sunshine, and we were bemoaning the lack of visible wildlife when we saw a family of 4 black bears browsing by the roadside. So cute. \u00a0We spent a little while watching them and taking photos before driving on.<\/p>\n

some miles down the road, I spotted an unusual sight. \u00a0A tortoise by the roadside, so again we stopped to admire and take photos and we moved him from the road for his own safety. \u00a0Having reached the end of Skyline Drive, we stopped to chat with a Ranger, proudly telling him we had saved the tortoise, before returning to drive back towards the hotel. \u00a0Some few miles later we spotted another Ranger who had stopped to rescue the same tortoise, who had yet again ventured across the road. \u00a0As he was picked up and placed ( this time safely on the other side of the road) you could almost see the expression on his face “… FFS, bloody do-gooders, can’t they leave me alone?”\"image\"<\/a> \"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had an early start this morning, deciding to drive the length of Skyline Drive to see what we could see, so having made ourselves gorgeous we set off, not even pausing for food. \u00a0That didn’t last long, so ten miles along the trail we pulled in for breakfast, and\u2026<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-usa-holiday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesleymills.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesleymills.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesleymills.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesleymills.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesleymills.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lesleymills.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172,"href":"https:\/\/lesleymills.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesleymills.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesleymills.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesleymills.co.uk\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}