In July I built this porch for one of my customers that bought this house whose back faced the street. She wanted to make it more inviting to her visiting friends when they come to visit her. While I was there I discovered a couple of roads that I thought would be great to ride on the bike.

The first road was Mesa Grande and had several nice views of Lake Henshaw.

The road condition was actually pretty good for a somewhat spirited ride. The great things was I only saw one car and I rode it in both directions.

Finish that ride I headed up the East grade of Mt. Palomar. The only Raptors I saw all day were these ones at a scenic viewpoint.

I couldn't tell if the river is actually flowing or is just back water from the lake. I don't think it has rained here for awhile.

This guy built his house up there so he could get a better view of my bike.

The first glimpse of the observatory while heading up the east grade. 

They have an awesome visitor center with detailed information. I read each one of these displays twice.

The 200" Hale scope was conceived in 1928 and commissioned in 1948. It remained the largest telescope in the world for 45 years.

I'm trying to decide if this is some kind of Juniper tree or is it possibly a Cedar of some sort.

I wish they had some of those powered WalMart shoping carts to get me there. Kind of a long walk for an old man.

The namesake of the telescope. He died 10 years before his project was completed.

Restricted access and poor lighting made it difficult to fully capture the actual scope.

You can put it's size in perspective by the worker walking across the floor.

135' tall and 137' wide

This smaller dome houses a 48' wide angle scope use for mapping the sky. So ends day one of my late summer trip.