Desert roadtrip

This weekend we went on quite the roadtrip! 

I'd also had some time in the week, so I went for a little solo hike. Chino Hills State Park is very popular right now, as it's in full bloom with California poppies! Apparently it's very busy during weekends, but as I went on a Wednesday, it was nice and empty. 

A very empty car park

I took a long walk through the park and saw long yellow flowers popping up almost immediately. I pushed my way through them like they were stalks of corn, following the trail. The first half was next to the road and easy to follow, but I then took a less busy trail, which started off fine, but was very overgrown in certain areas. 

As well as these long yellow flowers, there was a lot of grass and in certain areas, poppies! There were also some pretty purple flowers, and they looked so nice together, overlooking a green hill and the snowy mountain in the background. 

In some areas, the poppies covered big patches of ground and you could see orange smudges on the hills in the distance. It was a very pretty park, and I'm sure it looks very different the rest of the year when there is no green and everything is all sun scorched. 

We went out to play some board games on Friday night with some of our international friends, but weren't out too late as we had places to be on Saturday!

We didn't start out too early though. About 10:30 we left and headed east, driving for about two hours, leaving the cities and circling a huge lake called the Salton Sea. It's so big you can't see the end of it, it just drops off the horizon. We didn't stop here as I hadn't realised there would be recreation areas on this side of the shore, but it was still cool to look at and take some pictures from the car.

Our first stop was a town called Slab City. It was barely a town, more like a collection of trailers parked up in the desert, but they were all brightly painted and had slogans like "Jesus loves you" all over. We parked by Salvation Mountain, which is a hill that's been painted all over in more bright colours and Jesus slogans. 

We weren't able to walk on the hill itself, but we could go around it and found a little cave which was also painted as if it were tiles.

After the mountain, we drove on a mile or so further (yes we drove, it's hot in the desert) to a sculpture gallery called East Jesus. It was very interesting inside, all the "folk art" as I'd seen it called, was made from trash and it did look a little like a scrap heap. But if you looked closer, you could see there was method to the madness and there was some really weird stuff inside. A lot of decorated cars, some archways, and some robots, all made out of rubbish and bits and pieces. There was a whole section where they'd just stuck plastic ducks onto everything. You were allowed to touch all of the art (even lick it, although they didn't recommend it) and we had a quick go on the trash seesaw. 

We ate our lunch out here before getting back in the car and leaving this odd little art community. We drove around the rest of the sea and into the Anza-Borrego State Park. It was very flat to start with, but as we got further into it, it got hillier and hillier, until we pulled into our campsite right in a valley. 

It was still early, so before we set up camp we went for a little walk along the trail that started next to the campground. It was called cactus loop and there certainly were cacti! There were all sorts, including the cholla cactus we'd seen at Joshua tree park, and some flat cacti which were flowering. 

In fact, there were lots of flowers on this route, and in the afternoon sun they were very pretty. There were little yellow buttercups, red and purple cactus flowers and even some small white desert flowers.

After this loop, we went back to set up camp and had an early dinner. We then did the loop again as it wasn't very long and we wanted to see what it looked like at sunset. There wasn't much change as we were in a valley, but it did mean that by the time we were back the sun was setting and we could start our campfire and cook sausages for second dinner. 

It had been very hot during the day, and it turned into a very pleasant evening. With the fire and a thin jumper, we were more than warm enough and the desert has very few bugs which come out at night compared to the forest. 

We had a lovely evening and then tucked into bed. In the morning it was a little chilly, but as soon as the sun hit the campsite you could feel the heat. Luckily, this campground was a little oasis in the desert and had several trees surrounding it so we wouldn't get too hot. We'd bought a hammock ages ago, and this was the first site which had a place to hang it up, so we had a lovely easy morning eating breakfast and swinging in the shade. We even saw a little bunny - Happy Easter!

After we packed up our camp, we drove through the park to get to the northern side. This was where I was hoping to see some more desert flowers. Anza-Borrego is known for it's spring flowers, and with all the winter rains I was hoping to see a good bloom this year, but didn't know if we'd be too late in the season to catch them.

We drove down a long empty desert road, and could see some flowers starting to appear. We approached were I'd seen the park note them on the map, and could see a whole field's worth of yellow wildflowers! They got even thicker the further we went along, and looked beautiful against the bright blue sky and pink desert mountains. There were a few purple flowers mixed in too, but mostly yellow. 

We got some nice pictures here before moving on to the second flower location. It was just around the corner, so I was expecting more of the same, but it was even busier, and all the flowers were purple! As far as you could see there were flowers and nothing else. It was so pretty!

That was it for our desert exploration, and we got back in the car to drive home. On the way though, we decided to stop in Julian, a town known for the apples and apple pies. We'd been before on our trip to Anza-Borrego, and had panned for gold at the old mine. This time, we just went for pie. I had an apple and boysenberry, and Mitchell had an apple caramel which was full of cinnamon too. They were both very good warm and with ice-cream. 

We didn't stop by the mine, but we did pop into the pioneer museum. They had an odd collection of stuff from the Town's beginning in the 1860s, including clothes, lace, a printing press, farm equipment and gold panning items. They also had portraits and stories of some of the early settlers in the area.

After that, it really was home time, to rest and recuperate before our big weekend next week!!

All our love,

Emily and Mitchell

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