Ramona Stories

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At Home in San Diego

LA COSTA When I think of La Costa, I remember the wildlife -- the skunk that lived under our house, for instance, a beautiful creature whose size would double when it puffed up its fur ...

Best of 2003: Best Place To See A Real Cowboy Bunkhouse

Guy B. Woodward Museum of Western Culture 1886 Verlaque House 645 Main Street, Ramona 760-789-7644 This a fascinating old French Provincial mansion filled with the history of San Diego cowboy -- not Spanish ranchero -- ...

Best of 2003: Best Picnic & Bird Watching Spot

Dos Picos County Park 17953 Dos Picos Park Road, Ramona Nestled between two mountain swells (Dos Picos is Spanish for two peaks) with boulders dotting the surrounding hillside, the picnic area in this remote state ...

Best of 2003: Best Rock Climbing

Mount Woodson Highway 67, 3 miles north of Poway Road Mount Woodson is a boulder-studded promontory rising between Poway and Ramona. Weathering and erosion have worked their will on the mountain's tough granodiorite bedrock, carving ...

Roadblock History

First it was a country/western restaurant and dance hall. When that failed, it became a biker restaurant called the Roadhouse. For the past year, the low white building on the west end of Ramona's main ...

They're Killing My Bird Right Now

Donna Heilman, manager of Birdland in North Park, takes no chances when it comes to protecting her store full of birds, from $5 finches to $10,000 macaws, which can live over 70 years. "We have ...

Thread your way around the giant boulders of Ramona's Cobbleback Peak better known as Mount Woodson.

Indians called it Mountain of Moonlit Rocks, an appropriate name for a landmark visible, even at night, over great distances. Later settlers dubbed it Cobbleback Peak, a name utterly descriptive of its rugged, boulder-strewn slopes. ...

"Big" Black Mountain outside Ramona offers a unique perspective of central San Diego County's geography.

San Diego County's "big" Black Mountain (not the smaller one looming above Rancho Peñasquitos) rises gently to an elevation of 4051 feet outside Ramona. A fire-lookout tower once stood on Black Mountain's summit, taking full ...

Explore the new Boden Canyon Ecological Reserve, outside Ramona.

Comely Boden Canyon, rich with live-oak woodland and nestled between baked hillsides redolent with the sweet fragrance of sage, has become a part of San Diego County's newest parcel of protected open space. The Boden ...

Pedal your fat-tired steed over 20 miles of pavement and rutted dirt road in and beyond Ramona's Pamo Valley.

Spared from the threat of being inundated by a large reservoir, Pamo Valley awaits a possible destiny of becoming one of the county's premier nature preserves. A large parcel of Cleveland National Forest land surrounds ...

Best of 2000: Best Worm Farm

Sharon's Worm World 310 Creelman Lane, Ramona (760) 788-4423 Buy a pound of worms from Williams, the biggest worm farm in the county, and you'll get maybe 1000 wigglers. Buy a pound from Sharon MacLachlan, ...

Best of 2000: Best Wargames

Velocity Paintball Park San Vicente Road and Warnock Drive, Ramona (858) 513-2778 Paintball battles -- stalking and shooting opponents with paint-loaded waterguns -- used to be common but are no longer staged indoors anywhere in ...

Best of 2000: Best Place For A Cyclist To Be Run Down Like A Dog On The Road

Highway 78 from Ramona to the San Pasqual Valley Pedaling north on Pine Street from Highway 67 in Ramona, it looks like it's going to be a nice ride. Once you pass EPS Lumber and ...

Visit the new Simon Park open-space preserve outside Ramona

Simon Park Preserve, a diminutive new patch of dedicated open space, has recently opened adjacent to San Diego Country Estates near Ramona. The preserve, which is maintained for wildlife habitat and light recreation by the ...

Explore serene Dos Picos County Park, between Ramona and Poway.

Serene Dos Picos County Park, outside Ramona, nestles into East County's sweet-smelling chaparral hillsides like a dewdrop caught in the hollow of a leaf. On a recent weekday visit there, I spotted only a few ...

Venture off the car-clogged two-lane ribbon of Highway 78 and take a bike ride on Black Canyon Road near Ramona.

North and east of Ramona lie several back roads offering splendid late-spring bicycle riding for those who care to venture off the car-clogged two-lane ribbon of Highway 78. Black Canyon Road is perhaps the best ...

A walk along Santa Ysabel Creek near Ramona reveals the site of the never-built Pamo Valley Dam.

After flowing across the pristine, oak- and sycamore-dotted Pamo Valley north of Ramona, Santa Ysabel Creek cuts southwest down a steep gorge and finally emerges on the flatlands of San Pasqual Valley. In the '70s ...

The one-way hike from Black Canyon to Pamo Valley traverses pristine and isolated lands of the Cleveland National Forest near Ramona.

Arising on the west slope of the Volcan Mountains, Santa Ysabel Creek slides through Santa Ysabel Valley and soon enters the Lake Sutherland reservoir, northeast of Ramona. Once below the dam, water in the creek ...

Water splashes over small waterfalls at Black Canyon near Ramona.

In Black Canyon water has amply illustrated its mindless yet artistic ability to sculpt stone. Every once in a great while, a great gush of sediment-laden water tears through the canyon bottom, carving and polishing ...