Deserts: day 3
This post is part 3 of the "deserts_2009" series:
We got up at sunrise once again, and broke camp as quickly as possible. Packing up a frost coated tent is not fun. We drove south towards Anza Borrego State Park. The drive down took about two hours, and the weather was decent when we reached the visitor center. We replenished our water supply, took a quick walk around the grounds & inside the visitor center (David remembered everything from a year ago, and wanted to see it all again), and then drove a mile to the Borrego Palm Canyon trail head. This 3 mile (round trip) trail leads up to a California fan palm oasis. The trail itself looked to be in a fairly bad shape. According to a sign at the trailhead, two bridges over the creek in the canyon were completely washed out following a recent storm. While we could always make out roughly which direction to walk (up canyon, towards the palm oasis, and then back down afterwards), the trail was covered in assorted storm debris. Rocks, palm tree logs, dead yucca, and all sorts of other flotsam were everywhere. There was some rock scrambling (which David loved, and I didn't mind), and several stream crossings. David did a good job balancing on logs. The palm oasis itself was quite pretty and rather lush. We also saw our first ocotillo of the trip, and as an added bonus, its flowers were in bloom.
Following lunch, we drove a bit further south in the park to CA-78 to hike "The Slot". As the name suggests, its a slot canyon. Sadly, the (unpaved) road leading to the slot was completely washed out in a recent storm, and was impassible without a high clearance vehicle (of which my Passat is definitely not). We drove a few more miles east on CA-78 to Split Mountain Road, and headed a few miles south to the turn off for the Elephant Trees Trail. This unpaved road appeared to be in good condition, however it quickly degraded into a high clearance road too. Thankfully, I was able to safely pull of the road, and we walked less than a mile up the road to the trailhead. The trail is named after the fairly rare elephant trees which used to grow in abundance in the area. They got their name, as their trunk & limbs somewhat resemble an elephant's legs (thick & stocky). Today, there's only a single living elephant tree remaining, however the trail was still quite nice. It was the standard mixture of desert flora (various cacti, ocotillo, creosote, etc).
Afterwards, we drove a few more mile south on Split Mountain Road looking for the turn off for Fish Creek Wash, which lead to the Wind Caves (a series of caves that were created by wind weathering the rock over time). Unfortunately, while there was a clearly marked turn off for the road, the road itself was a disaster area. There was literally no road left. A recent storm decimated the area, leaving nothing but debris strewn across a wide flood plane. I can only guess that the road/wash used to be somewhere in the middle of the mess, but now it was most definitely impassible without both high clearance & four wheel drive. I was a bit disappointed that half of our Anza Borrego itinerary was inaccessible, but decided to scrap the 2nd day in the park rather than just wasting time with random filler.
Since originally I was planning to camp at the Fish Creek campground, that was definitely out since I couldn't even get to the campground. Instead I opted to head much further south in the park, and spend the night at Bow Willow campground. We camped there a year ago, and the weather was perfect at the time. We had 80s in the day, and low 50s at night. This time was not going to be quite the same. It took over an hour to drive down to Bow Willow on route S2, and by the time we arrived it was nearly 4PM. Since sunset was at around 6PM, this didn't leave me much time to get setup. When we arrived the wind was kicking up, and I opted to take a campsite as close to the hillside as possible in the hope that it would serve as a wind break. This placed us in between two popup campers, one of which had an ill behaved dog which kept chasing David all over the place. So while I was trying to build the tent, David was freaking out over this stupid dog. Eventually its owner managed to get it on a leash (as it should have been all along), and we finished getting the tent setup. The wind continued to roar, and additionally, what appeared to be storm clouds started to gather to the west. I got dinner finished as fast as possible, we ate in the car to avoid the wind, and then retreated to the tent. Shortly after sunset, it started to rain. At first it was light, but turned into a full downpour by the time I attempted to go to sleep at 8PM. While the rain seemed to let up for a while just after midnight, the wind did not. Then the wind stopped around 2AM, but the rain returned, and continued off & on until around 5AM.
All pictures are posted here.
This post is part 3 of the "deserts_2009" series: