Palomar Mountain
Southern California
Current LocationOur Visit
Short stop in late July
Area population
Maybe a couple hundred?
Elevation
5,512 feet (Palomar peak is 6,142 feet)
In late July, 130,000+ people head to the San Diego convention center to attend Comic Con. The whole downtown area is turned over to art installations, brand activations, vendors, popup events, and sleezy pedicabs. Comic Con used to arrive on our doorstep each year like a cosplay frat party and the only option was to embrace the chaos.
This year we are lowly outsiders relegated to the edge of San Diego county as the hotels were swept up by visiting superheros and anime characters. So on this in-between-work-events week, we find ourselves up the winding Highway to the Stars on Palomar Mountain way out in the sticks surrounded by pines, birds, and bugs.
Our Thumbs Up List
- Palomar Observatory (opens in new tab) is open most days and offers guided tours on the weekend during the summer months.
- The road to Palomar Observatory is known as the Highway to the Stars (opens in new tab). Once the site for the observatory was selected, the County of San Diego built the road now designated as county road S6. It's a beautiful switchback route that climbs over 2500 feet.
Photo Albums
July 18, 2026
Palomar Observatory
The observatory is an active astronomical research center operated by Caltech. It houses the Hale telescope which uses a 200-inch Pyrex parabolic glass plate to focus light from deep space which can be studied by capturing images (originally on glass plates, now digitally) or by analyzing the wavelengths (called spectroscopy). Edwin Hubble took the first image on January 26, 1949 of a nebula named for him.
July 18, 2026
Boucher Trail
We did a short hike in the Palomar Mountain State Park that took us by an active lookout tower. The tower is staffed May through December by volunteers who watch for signs of fire and report a location and weather conditions to emergency responders. They yelled down and invited us up for a tour of the lookout.