Ramona Stories
Dennis Grimes spends the first half-hour of every day “tending to Twitter, being a cheerleader” for Ramona Valley wine. From September 6 of this year: “94F today, 47F low & 83F tomorrow Ramona Valley AVA …
Ramona resident Kia Turner, 16, walked away from a single-car accident on San Vicente Road, just outside of San Diego Country Estates, on July 15. The accident occurred at about 6 p.m., when, according to …
Twelve young ladies gathered in Ramona on April 17 to vie for one of four positions on the royal court of the 2010 Ramona Rodeo season. Through the swirling dust and thunder of pounding hooves, …
An accident involving two cars occurred at the intersection of San Vicente Road and Arena Drive on March 30. According to several witnesses, Barbara Bremer, 80, drove her Pontiac Grand Am into the intersection and …
At approximately 1:15 p.m. on March 7, two cars were involved in a head-on collision near Ramona. An unidentified 19-year-old female lost control of her vehicle and veered into the opposing lane. The driver and …
Alisa McVay and husband Tim Lehr left home in a hurry last week after SDG&E arborist Michael Daleo informed the couple that they were "in imminent danger" and needed to leave immediately. SDG&E, according to …
On an overcast January day in 2002, I plunged into the backcountry of East County, carrying a half-full pack and weathered walking stick. Hiking into the serene green of silence and solitude was my escape, …
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. The name refers to two prominent mountain peaks nearby, though which …
“So far, Deicide is the only show I haven’t been able to move up here,” says Joe Troutman, who last week walked away from his four-year job booking the Jumping Turtle in San Marcos to …
Several back roads, some paved and some unpaved, strike off in various directions from Ramona, each offering splendid bicycle touring that doesn’t have to include tangling with snarling traffic on major roads. Black Canyon Road …
In the past couple of years, San Diego County has opened two new flora- and fauna-rich open-space preserves just south of Ramona. Both are key links in the county’s Multiple Species Conservation Program, which aims …
The white church buses parked in the dirt lot outside Mountain View Community Church looked downright old-timey. The huge white church building rising up behind them was anything but. Inside was high and wide and …
The easy-going, mostly descending (450 feet of elevation gain/1200 feet of elevation loss), east-to-west, one-way walk or mountain-bike ride on the Santa Ysabel Truck Trail near Ramona is fine for a cool day in February, …
Ramona held its annual Christmas-tree lighting on the evening of December 13. At nine the next morning, the bell in the brown wood steeple above the First Congregational Church clanged out a summons to the …
Real estate developer Orrin Day, who has owned the Ramona movie theater on Main Street for six years, stopped showing films two years ago because people weren’t coming. So, he put the 6000-square-foot theater (built …
A lawsuit was filed in March of this year by five environmental groups — including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club — stating that overarching land-management plans prepared by the U.S. Forest …
March 6 started out pretty much like any other day. Work was busy. I got off a little late, went home, got in the shower, and when I got out, my son Marshal told me …
In Black Canyon, water amply illustrates its mindless yet artistic ability to sculpt stone. Every once in a great while, a gush of sediment-laden storm runoff tears through the canyon bottom, carving and polishing the …
Shocked shoppers see a woman fall to her death from a parking structure at Parkway Plaza in El Cajon. Was she pushed? In Chollas View, a mother loses the second of her two sons to …
"[To] buy a bottle of wine from me makes me a bootlegger. That's not right."
"Almost every winemaker [in Ramona] is either keeping his day job or is retired."
"People want the romance; they want the story of your winery, the story of your vineyard."
"They want to have their own private label - the family wine."
Like others before her, Gotfredson found selling San Diego wine to San Diegans a difficult business.
Standing tall amid lesser bumps on the west slope of the Cuyamaca Mountains, Eagle Peak has a view of the island-dimpled ocean, scattered parts of urban and suburban San Diego, and the higher mountains -- …
"My goal is to make California-class wines in Ramona."
With a little hyperbole added, you might think of the upper San Diego River area as being San Diego County's "Little Yosemite." A number of waterfalls 100 or so feet high exist either on the …
"This is party central," says 20-year-old Jim Portinga of Ramona. "Everyone you talk to says, 'Where's the party?' There is a big drug epidemic up here. I would say 70 to 80 percent of the …
"It's important to be able to name your dirt something."
The 1574-acre Mount Gower Open Space Preserve was hard-hit by the Cedar Fire of October 2003. Today, after the extraordinarily wet 2004-05 rainfall year and after a first wave of precipitation in the current rainy …
"One-third of my generation is dead because of abortion. Forty-five million babies have been murdered," said Edgar Savage Brown III, 25-year-old founder of the local Bound4Life chapter. Bound4Life's website claims they are "a nonviolent revolutionary …
“I was too stupid to know it was time to stop. All of a sudden, one day, I said, ‘There’s fruit on those vines!’”
While in Ramona on an escape from city life a year ago, I unexpectedly ran into an old friend, Karen Webster, on one of the town's back streets. She was on her horse. At first …
Fire in the California backcountry is an inevitability. Thirty years of fuel meant that when something happened, it was going to be big.
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 -- …
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 …
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 …
Broad, open grasslands in the topography of San Diego County are the exception to the norm, which is chaparral-covered mesas and barrancas. And most of the natural grasslands, Mission Valley for example, have been developed. …
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 …
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 …
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. …
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 …
“We only milked 200 cows. Most places milk 1000. The milk trucks don't want to drive all the way out here.You've got to have 700 gallons, or they charge you double on their freight."
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …