Gary-Summer: March 28, 2019

Thursday, March 28, 2019

March 28, 2019 - Anza Borrego

Title: March 28, 2019 - Anza Borrego
Hike Info : Description : Background : Extra Photo's : Animals : Flowers and Plants

Hike Info:

Type: Hiking : Car

GPS Tracks (kmz from Google Earth)
Description:

Warning: while there is a lot more writings than I thought there would be, most of this entry is visual.

I got up around 7am and just moseyed around a bit. By 8, we were down for breakfast. Sort of a plain hotel food-oatmeal, cold cereal, hard-boiled eggs and toast. Definitely not on the upper level of fare. Still it should be enough to keep me going. By 9, we are on the road to Anza-Borrego.

I am driving again and we head south on highway 86 until we get to Sunrise Road in Salton Sea City. Before that, we spot the Salton Sea-the first time for me. There we go off on a residential street-I use that term loosely. Google is taking us that way, but I am thinking the only reason is that it is a few feet shorter. Definitely not for the quality of the street or the scenic value. But we are only on this for about a mile.

Desert Ravine

We shortly hit S22 or the Borrego-Salton Sea Way. We then head west about 20-25 miles, I think. We have past several RV’s and jeeps out on the desert. Too my uninitiated eyes, looks mostly like sand, grasses and a few brush. So far not as impressed as I should be. But that changes as we get closer to Anza-Borrego. There are more signs of where water has molded the desert floor. Ravines cut deep into sand. Flowers start appearing.

Another view of a ravine

Just inside Anza Borrego we see a sign and turn in to see what it says. It was one of those “general” signs explaining what you are seeing. Which are interesting while you are there, but by the time you see about five of them, they blend together.. Anyway, this is our first Anza-Borrego experience. There is a nice size ravine made of a softer type of material-mostly just dirt. But there are some nice flowers which offset the drabness of the ground. Then there are some dried up spindly kind of plant, about 8-10’ tall. Unknown what this is, but it certainly has our fascination. But we move on.

Ocotillo

After several more miles, we see what looks like a homemade sign saying “Flower Fields”, With an arrow pointing up a road. So we travel up Henderson Canyon Road. Pretty soon there are hundreds of butterflies flying around the road, making avoiding them impossible. And then there is a field of yellow. We find out that this is a brittlebush field.wonder.

Brittlebush

Here we wander the field for about an hour, discovering some of its wonders. What looks like a solid field of yellow, really has separate bushes which provides narrow tracks to navigate. The real challenge is not to step on any small plants or even more so, the numerous caterpillars busily munching on the various plants, but not on the brittlebushes. In the midst of the yellows, we see some purples and white flowers as well. As we go through our time here, we will need to figure them out. A good first introduction to Anza-Borrego.

Flower Field of Brittlebush

Mountains and Desert Dandelions

We continue down Henderson Canyon Road until we reach a T at DiGiorio Road. Here we decide to head more north to the other Flower Field on the map. A couple of miles up the road, there is another yellow field to the west of the road-not the one we are looking for. This is wedged between orange trees. The yellow is brighter than the brittlebush. Turns out it is a Desert Dandelion. We wander the length of the side of the field, about a quarter mile or so. Wonder if these fields are all over the place.

As we continue north on DiGiorgio Road, it changes from being paved to dirt, with signs warning about getting stuck. But now we start passing a lot of those spindly looking plants-we now know they are called ocotillo’s. Later on we also find out that even though they have some really nice looking thorns, they are not cactus. But they have pretty red flowers at their tips. Sherri sees one, really showing off and we stop. After the pictures, we climb a ridge it is on, but only go less than a quarter mile up. But we get a nice idea of the lay of the land.

We follow the dirt road up Coyote Canyon. I drive slow, both for the view and just to avoid the jostling. The road is pretty decent. After about 40 minutes of slow driving, we get to a place called Desert Garden. We stop and wonder what we will see here. There is foot path leading up a hill. We follow that and see a few other varieties of plants. None of the fields we saw before. But now we are seeing more cacti and ocotillo.

Desert Garden Foot Path

The path leads us off of the hill and sort of peters out. But there are plenty of footprints to follow, which we do. We head up the wash. Not bad walking, expecting more like beach sand walking, but this is fairly hard packed. We stop often to take pictures. When we get to the base of the tall ridge, our wash divides and we decide to turn back. We did not realize that we had been climbing, but when we look back, we can see a long ways off.

Desert Garden paths

Once back at the car, we decide to have lunch-just peanut butter and nutella. Then head back down the dirt road. Neither of us really wanted to see how much the truck could handle as we had heard the rest of the road is pretty badly rutted.

But where to now? We should see the Visitor Center. Here I ask if our State Park pass is good? No-only good during a park’s off-season. So we pay a $9 parking fee and go into the the Center. Here I talked with a volunteer, Herb who is a local. I asked him if a person had little more than a day to spend in the park, where would he go. He asked the type of vehicle I had-Ford Ranger, medium to high clearance. He suggested Blair Valley and June Wash.

It is getting a bit late for a new adventure. So we just walked around a nature trail close to the center. We see some of the flowers we had previously seen. Pleasant enough walk for us as tired as I felt at least.

Looking out the wash out of Desert Garden

So we head back the way we came-it was after 5pm by now. We are starting to think dinner, but nothing which we pass by really appeals to us. There is a pizza place in Coachella which looks interesting-we will try that.But there is an accident on 86 and we inch along for over an hour and I cannot get over to head to the pizza place. So we go to Indio. Nothing seems interesting so we finally decide to try IHOP. I order a Philly Cheese Sandwich. While not bad, it was just OK on the scale. I guess dinner sandwiches are not what it is known for. Maybe a breakfast. We get back to the hotel room after 8:00pm. Tired. Showered and lounged around before heading to bed.

Background

IHOP Indio. We went to this IHOP twice. This is the first trip there, for dinner. The service was acceptable. I was particularly hungry as we had a full day in the desert around Anza-Borrego. Recognizing that IHOP is known more for breakfasts than dinners, I saw a sandwich I was interested in-a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich, I would rate it as being OK, not bad, not great. The clue was that the cheese looked like it was American cheese just melted over some store bought meat. The sauce was neutral. Still it was satisfying for what I wanted at the moment.

Extra Photo's