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dxboon
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Walks With Reign: Episode 5

Episode 5: Western Town

This has been a beautiful Southern California weekend.  Saturday was a little on the hot side but today was quite nice, around 80 degrees at mid-day along the Pacific coast.  I decided to take Reign for a hike in the Santa Monica Mountains of Malibu with the intention of taking lots of nature pictures for you, but like a dummy I forgot to charge my camera.  :-(  Anyway, we saw some amazing mountains, wildflowers, birds -- my favorite was a kingfisher with a minnow in his beak (Damn my camera battery!), and critters of all sorts, including a coyote!

We hiked at a place called Paramount Ranch Park.  The park used to be a "movie ranch" and is still used for filming sometimes.  Movie ranches are remnants of the golden era of Hollywood.  Many movie studios, including Paramount, bought large swaths of land outside the city to use for filming westerns.  After all, you can't have cowboys chasing cows through downtown LA!  (Although, many, many years ago studios did keep cows/horses in the middle of Hollywood when filming!).  Most of the large-scale sets have been torn down now that the ranch is part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, but a small set called "Western Town" remains for visitors to meander through and production companies to film at.  Classic westerns like, "Gunfight At The OK Corral" and "The Virginian" filmed here as did TV shows from "Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman" to "The X-Files."

I wish I had more pictures to chronicle our adventures today, but these will have to do.  I promise to do better next time!  Reign sends you all his best regards, as do I!