Anza Borrego - day 2
This post is part 2 of the "socal-2008" series:
- Anza Borrego - day 1
- Anza Borrego - day 2
- Anza Borrego - day 3
- Anza Borrego - day 4
- san diego - day 5
- home - day 6
We tended to wake up at sunrise, just about every day, which seemed to be between 5AM & 6AM.
This morning we were treated to a beautiful sunrise painted across the valley to the west. To the east, I saw the sun rising over the Salton Sea.
After packing up camp, we drove a few miles further east on S22 to the Calcite Mine Road/Trail. This 2.2 mile road requires high clearance/4x4 in many places, so we ended up hiking the entire distance to the site of the calcite mine. The road basically goes up & down through various canyons & washes. While it wasn't that difficult, it had a few steep portions that either had soft sand or exposed bedrock. When we reached the end of the road, we saw little pieces of glittering calcite on the ground, and this view to the south</a>. After the hike back to the car, we drove back to the visitor center to replenish our water bottles, and have lunch.
Next we drove south on S3, to CA78 west, to S2 south, to our next campsite in Blair Valley. Blair Valley is somewhat unique in that the entire valley (which is several miles across) is pocked with primitive campsites along a tangle of very narrow sandy roads amongst the desert scrub. At the far southeastern side of the valley are three historical sites. Two are pre-historical native american sites, with petroglyphs and moreros (rounded holes in stones used which served as a mortar/pestle setup). The 3rd is a ruin of the Marshal Home site, where a family lived on a mountain top for several years, in a very rustic adobe home during the first half of the 20th century. We planned to explore the petroglyphs and home site the following morning. The plan for the afternoon was to find a decent camp site amongst the maze of roads.
If we had any big complaints about Anza Borrego its that the maps & signs were rather poor. The only map that they provide at the visitor center is very scant on details, and leaves nearly all unpaved roads completely unlabeled (not to mention doesn't even show the majority of them). To compound matters, there isn't even a scale of miles on this map. Then there's the problem with the signs (or lack there of). Perhaps, we've been spoiled by national park signs, but in Anza Borrego there were very few 'advanced warning' road signs letting you know that something was approaching a quarter or half mile ahead. All that we ever saw at Anza Borrego was a sign, most often, *parallel* to the road (rather than perpendicular so that it could be seen a bit in advance when approaching), which was very rarely more than 9 inches across. So not only wasn't it easily visible in advance, but it was so small that you had to basically slow down to a near stop on the road just to be able to read it.
This problem really came to a head in Blair Valley where we got lost a number of times just driving around the valley, and had to guess where a road went, especially when it was a fork. At first we were hoping to find a decent campsite relatively close to one of the pit toilets, but it quickly became apparent that in order to do so, we'd have to be either very close to the valley entrance road (where there would be much more traffic), or along the primary trunk road leading out to the 3 historical sites (again, where there would be alot more traffic, not to mention noisy RV's already setup). We quickly came to the conclusion that we would have to forgo toilets altogether that night if we wanted to have a quiet, secluded, private campsite. After driving across the valley for close to an hour (as the roads, while not in poor shape, really weren't safe to drive in a passenger car any faster than 10-15MPH), we ended up at the very south eastern edge of the valley. This turned out to be a good thing, as we were relatively close to one of the side roads that led to the historical sites, yet we were rather isolated away from nearly all the other campsites. This was the view of the valley (and our campsite - look for the yellow tent) from a few hundred feet south of the campsite. Here's a view from a bit further southwest of the campsite (the big boulder in the center towards the bottom is where we had our campsite).
After setting up the tent, we did some exploring of the general vicinity. Immediately behind the large boulder there were many small bones on the ground, from what I guessed was either lizards or rodents. Denise suggested that perhaps whatever was eating them lived back there, but we never saw any live animals. David & I also walked a bit up towards the mountain immediately behind us, and saw a decent variety of cactus & agave. Again, we were treated to a nice sunset.
That night was an interesting one. We were very isolated. When I was looking at the stars (which were even greater in number than the previous night), I couldn't see any lights from humans in any direction (nor could I hear anything). It truly felt as if we were the only people for miles. Blair Valley is at approximately 2500ft elevation, which is nearly 3 times higher than Arroyo Salado, and we felt the difference that night. It got much colder. Also, during the night, we heard several packs of coyotes howling on a few occasions, which was a bit creepy. At one point during the night, I could have sworn that I heard *something* walking around just outside the tent, but since there were so many human footprints out there, I couldn't make out any animal prints in the morning. In the morning it was 40F when we finished packing up the camp and started the car. Of course at that point the sun had already come up, so its quite possible that it was even colder during the night.
This post is part 2 of the "socal-2008" series: