Gary-Summer: March 2019

Friday, March 29, 2019

March 29, 2019 - Anza-Borrego

Title: March 29, 2019 - Anza-Borrego
Hike Info : Description : Trail Lessons : Extra Photo's : Animals : Flowers and Plants

Hike Info:

Type: Hiking : Car

GPS Tracks

Description:

Sort of a repeat of yesterday morning. Except that we leave about 10-15 minutes earlier. Also Sherri is driving. Instead of turning at S22, we continue on south to highway 78. There is less relief to this area than the northern part, until we get to Anza-Borrego itself. I notice that there is a trail on our way in called the Narrow Earth Trail (pdf for interpretive trail).

Narrow Earth Area

Soft and Hard Rock

Sounded sort of interesting, so we stop there and go on our first “trail” walk. This is a guided walk talking about the geological formation of the area. We seem to be the only ones who are interested in this as the few others seem to just whoosh by us. When we get to the farthest point on the trail, we continue to follow a track. Soon we noticed that there are no more interpretive signs. But the path leads us up a gully, with each turn something catches our eye. That is until we come to a small 7’ face. While there is a trail around the face, we decide that this the end of the line for us.

The Ravine

We turn around and rediscover the rest of the places the pamphlet talked about. A few other tourist come by. A couple wonders about a few places to go too. So out comes the map and we show them what little we know.

Gary exploring

The way out

Then we take to the road again, with me behind the wheel. Our next stop is close to Tamarisk Grove Campground. We park on the side of the road, by the Campground. Across the road is our objective: the Cactus Loop.

From the Cactus Trail looking down at Tamerisk Campground

We park outside of the campground as it is restricted inside the campground to only those who are staying. It looks like several others have had the same idea. We cross the road and find the trail. We then find out immediately why this is called the Cactus Trail (pdf for interpretive trail). Many many types of cactus surround us. There are ones that we have seen already such as the beaver tail and the teddy bear and the cholla cactus but then there's others which we have not seen either. This all makes it interesting to walk.

Barrel Cactus along the Cactus Trail

The trail takes us up a draw past several cactus. And it continues on going up I can see why some people are turning back. But we continue on and the trail climbs to the top of a ridge which we follow pretty much all the way up. The brochure says it's it is a mile loop but it certainly feels a lot longer-many of the online trail blogs peg it as 0.6 or 0.7 miles. Maybe it is because we are stopping at each point of interest and reading about it. Or it could be just that it is a lot longer. Or I am that far out of shape?

Whatever the reason it is interesting at the very top there is a little social trail out to the top of a little knoll. You are able to look out over what we have climbed. This includes the oasis-like Tamarisk Campground. It is a fine sight to see. Then we start down. There is a little place where the trail can go one way or the other way. Of course, we followed the other way-quickly coming to a dead end. Still it is of good looking down into a ravine filled with yucca plants and barrel cactus.

Yucca Plant or a Desert Agave

Some ladies passes by and we discuss a bit about subjects I do not know. Mostly the flowers, but some of the topography of the surrounding area. We continue on down the trail. Just looking then enjoying what were seen. The sun is getting hot and I think we are just about ready to finish up the trail. About 10 minutes later we come out to the road and are by the car. By this time it is after 1:00pm and we are hungry. So we have our lunch and then take an afternoon nap-yes a nap. You know this vacationing thing is rough on us old people.

Around 2:00pm we wake up and decide on where we're going. It is a bit too late to go to June Walsh. So we decided to do the other road with the volunteer yesterday told us about. That would be Blair Valley. We turned down highway S2, which is also a route of the Southern Overland Trail, We find the Blair Valley turn off and start our journey up Blair Valley. There are scores of RVs and Jeeps and campers in a semi dispersed camping area.

We continue past them. There are pockets of other people camping but they are plenty off the road. The road is not too bad. The truck easily makes it over things. We come to a sign which talks about some grinding stones, morteros. A trail which goes about half a mile leads to the grinding area-called appropriately enough, the Morteros Trail. So we get on the trail and walk it and. It is a pleasant walk, not steep at all. We are starting to get familiar with what we are expecting to see in this locality.

Morteros

Rock where the Morteros are

A single Morteros

At the top of the ridge, we meet three things 1) We see a photographer with an an aluminum umbrella, tucked behind some rocks. 2) We see a hiker who came by us. We chat with him for a few minutes before he is on his way. 3) And then behind some big rock we found the morteros, a set of old grinding holes. The grinding holes are very much like what we have seen before-at least that's my interpretation. I'm sure an archaeologist would be able to differentiate the different grinding holes here from the pine nuts grinding holes in the Sierra. The photographer comes down and we chat with him for a few minutes. He had hike this in his youth, about 20 years ago. But now he lives up in Portland. We make a decision about going on. There is a foot path leading down the other side of the ravine. We decided that this was enough walking for right now.

So we head back to the car. We also decided to continue on up the road even though we have heard that the road gets a little bit more dicey as we go further in. And they are right it is a little bit more interesting steering, that is it just very little. There is a few deeper ruts but I have crossed worse and other low-clearance vehicles have made it up this road. When we get to the end of the road, there is a parking area for the Petroglyphs Trail. That is the trail we were looking for.

Petroglyphs

Petroglyphs Rock

For some reason, we are more conscientious of snakes now than we have in the past. Also the cactus seem to grow a little bit closer to the trail. The trail sort of wanders in and out of the cactus which makes things more interesting. But we did not touch the cactus and they did not chase us. So we continue on our way. The petroglyphs are about ¾ mile in and only on one huge rock.

We could go on looking around for other markings, but we decide it is time to turn back. The way back seems easier, maybe because you're going more downhill. When we get back to the car it is around 5pm. Definitely a good idea that we turned back when we did. We do not know this area and I do not want to be caught out on roads I do not known in the dark. It is still a lot of light but we will be needing to go back about 40 minutes down the dirt road and just wanted to be able to see everything.

Sherri taking a hike on the PCT

Now that we are on the paved road, do we want to seek something else? We decide to go back to the hotel. On the way back, I tell Sherri she needs to go take a hike! So I stop the car, and tell her to get out. There is a trail there and so she starts walking it. The trail, you might ask? It is the PCT. There is a quarter mile section between two roads. I drive around and pick her up. But not before she confers with some real PCT’ers under an overpass.

We retrace our drive this from this morning and get to Highway 86 and then head north. We realize that we need more gas and we see that the gas at Red Earth service station, which is attached to a casino. It is the cheapest price in the area. Along with cheap, comes confusion. We have to circle the service station a couple times to get into a line and even then, somebody tries to break into line in front of me. But the gas is cheap.

We head on and decide that will go to the pizza place we saw last night. So Sherri navigates us to eastward and we find it. When we get there, we realize that this is a Mexican pizza place. Looks like everything has jalapenos not pepperoni. Onward we head, with a hungry stomach. When we get to Indio, we decide that we've had enough searching for someplace to eat. We decided to go someplace safe, Carl's Jr. And so we go from a pizza to a burger. We then head back to the hotel room and take showers. Feel relaxed and just lay in bed, recovering so we can sleep