It is usually bittersweet when I let sellers know their escrow is closed on this beautiful mountain. It was such a pleasure to deal with Bob and Paula Litchfield’s daughters the past few months with their family cabin. Bob was so intrigued with Palomar that he interviewed the old timers, gathered many historical stories and published the Palomar Views books for all of us to enjoy.
Today the cabin did change owners.
SDG&E had taken down eight huge trees and I was waiting for the clean up so we could get vehicles in to post the listing. However, during a whirl-wind of showings, a couple shared about their cabin dreams, I knew the Litchfield Cabin checked every single box and even more. They have grown kids and grandkids and everyone can come for sleepovers real soon as the cabin sleeps 10 people! They just had to have it.
I thought many of you can relate to Katie and Rosalind memories spanning their 44 years enjoying the cabin:
“Our family came to the cabin in 1982, when my sister and I were still in grade school. Nearly every Friday after the final school bell, we would begin the familiar drive into the mountains, often stopping at Dudley’s in Santa Ysabel for warm bread, pastries, and pie to carry with us into the weekend.
Our first stay came in winter after a heavy snowfall. As native San Diegans, our parents did not yet own snow chains, so we left the car at the end of the last paved road across from the lodge and walked the rest of the way in, pulling our bags and supplies behind us on an old hand me down toboggan. That walk through the snow became the beginning of a lifetime of small adventures shaped by the seasons.
Winter weekends were filled with sledding on hills near the cabin, some of them steeper than our parents would have chosen, and all of them unforgettable. In spring, daffodils rose from the fresh green grass. Summer brought long hikes, rock climbing, and quiet discoveries of Indian grinding stones, always accompanied by watchful eyes for rattlesnakes and poison oak. On one long walk through Jeff Valley below the property, our grandfather found an arrowhead resting in the earth.
Friends joined us often, gathering for observatory visits and long game nights warmed by a roaring fire. Late summers led us on foot to an old, overgrown apple orchard near Doane Pond, where we gathered tart apples and walked through fields alive with swarming ladybugs. As winter returned each year, we would find a small stand of trees ready for thinning and bring one home to become our family Christmas tree.
Through decades of changing seasons, this cabin has been a place of wonder, tradition, and belonging. It has held our childhood, our family, and our quiet joys, and we hope it welcomes its next caretakers with the same sense of magic and memory.”
It certainly has and we’ll introduce you to the new owners real soon!
Bonnie Phelps, Realtor helping making dreams come true!
760-533-1742
Palomar Mountain News 
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