April 2008 Anza-Borrego State Park Desert Trip


Joan and I did a trip to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park during the third week of April, 2008. The park is one of our favorite places to go in the Spring. At any rate, here's a little photo tour of our trip to the California Desert. We stayed at the Borrego Valley Inn, a very, very nice place that we've come to really love. This is our fifth time back to the park, and we always stay here. Joan loves having her coffee in the morning on the patio, watching the birds and listening to the fountain  For that matter, I do to, too!

The Ocotillo was blooming! (OK, they water it!) I love ocotillo. I'm also rather proud of this photograph, taken with my little Canon point-and-shoot digital.

Day One: Grapevine Canyon, Sentenac Canyon, San Felipe Creek and STROMATOLITES


Stromatolites are strange forms of mineral deposits laid down by cyanobacteria....sometimes known as blue-green algae. Fossil stromatolites are among the most ancient fossils ever found, some dating back as far as  three BILLION years. The amateur geologist in me just HAD to go see the stromatolites in San Felipe Creek, once I learned they were there, so off we went, to search them out.

 

 

See the white crust on the rocks?  Some of that is "tufa", calcium carbonate that's chemically deposited on the rocks, but a lot of the "bumpy" material is stromatolites.  In San Felipe Creek (and to the south, Carrizo Creek above the Bow Willow Campground)   we get a look back 600-plus million years of time and can stand  next to (and tread on) something very similar to the earliest forms of cellular life that ever existed.  Most people will just see scummy white stuff on the rocks, but I get excited about things like this.

 

 

Being who I am, I had to get up close and personal with these incredible living fossils from the beginnings of life on this planet. This shot is taken just under the bridge over San Felipe Creek.

You can read more about Stromatolites: http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ploct97.htm  and http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanofr.html

Yes, I'm wearing a camouflage kilt in these pictures!

We tried to hike down the creek, but it was too thickly overgrown with brush, so we drove 2 miles down the road to the pull-off at Plum Canyon/Grapevine Canyon and hiked up the wash to find the water. It was full of filamentous green algae (scummy!) but there were birds everywhere and LOTS of stromatolites.  For a good ¾ of a mile the creekbed was cemented into a solid mass, even though it was completely dried out. Obviously, the cyanobacteria have adapted to cyclical wet/dry seasons.   We stopped for lunch, there. On the way back out I stopped to take pictures of cactus flowers, for anyone who thinks the desert is devoid of color and beauty.....OK, OK, I took them because I LIKE cactus flowers!

 

Grapevine Valley....Sentenac Canyon and the creek are off to the left.

 

Lower Sentenac Canyon and San Felipe Creek

 

My very own desert flower, Joan!

 

Cactus flowers:  beavertail, cholla, barrel cactuses.

 

Can you find the bee?  When the bees dive into one of  these flowers they plunge in below the stamens and completely disappear from view.

Day Two:  Clark Valley

The next day we headed up the Clark Valley, behind Clark Dry Lake. Clark Dry Lake was the site of a well known radio observatory until the late 1980's. The Army Air Force used it as a landing strip during WWII. I feel like it's not ăright to go for a trip to the desert and not make it into real "desert". It just doesn't seem right to spend all your time in the places where there's water, for the whole trip! So up Clark Canyon we went. Up the valley, a little farther than we got (about 9 miles and a 3000 foot elevation gain) are ruins of a Cahuilla Indian village. We drove out about 3 miles past the Clark Dry Lake and then hiked another 3 miles past Coyote Mountain, up to the head of Harper Canyon and stopped for lunch. Another 2-3 miles ahead on the other side of the valley is the pass into Rockhouse Valley and the trail to the Cahuilla homes.  OK, so we have a hiking goal for next year!!!

Me, laughing off the heat in my X-Kilt. Hey, it was only about 80 F.

Lunch in the shade of an ocotillo.

Here's a really nice Ocotillo by the side of the dirt road, with Joan in there for scale.

The view at lunch, with Clark Dry Lake in the distance and Coyote Mountain to the right.  The Santa Rosa mountains rise up to over 4,000 feet, behind us on the left.

As you can see, we hiked on dirt roads all day long.  That's tiring, as the sand is tough to walk in.

Day Three: Borrego Palm Canyon

 

On Thursday we headed up into the local jewel; Borrego Palm Canyon. This is a must-do hike if you are in the area, and it's not far from the Visitors Center.. The canyon sides are rocky, hot and barren, but the creek flows down through the canyon and supports an incredible array of life. We saw tons of birds, insects, reptiles and even frogs! The highlight of the trip was getting really close (they came to us, we didn't chase them up the hill) to four Desert Bighorn Sheep. There were four rams on the hillside on the way back down, and they came down within 30-40 feet of us.

From the foot of the canyon, you wouldn't know what's up there.  When a hard rainfall hits high in the mountain this wash can fill with water in a very short time. In 2006 a flash flood roared through and took about half of the first palm grove with it.

Hiking up the canyon, it starts out dry, but it's only half a mile before you find the stream.

There's life everywhere!

You hike about a mile before you spot the palm grove up ahead.

And 20 minutes later, you're there!

Sphinx moth. These were everywhere in the evenings.

We hiked another mile past the palm grove and stopped for lunch by the stream. It was a beautiful little hideeaway.

 

Look, some studly guy in a kilt!

In the stream we found, to my great surprise....frogs.....who'd a thunk it, in the desert?

After lunch we hiked back down the canyon, pausing above the Palm Grove to look at the view.

We scanned the canyon walls, and Joan spotted them! There were four of them, three full-grown rams and a younger fellow. We stared and stared for a good 45 minutes until they finally moved off on up the hill. Desert Bighorn Sheep are an endangered species, there are only a few hundred  left. Last year we had the UNBELIEVABLE experience of seeing twenty-one of them in this same canyon. However, that's a once in a lifetime lucky break, and seeing four on this trip is still fantastic. We didn't see any sheep at all the first three times we hiked up the canyon.

After all that excitement, we hiked on down the canyon and back to the car, finishing up three truly wonderful days in the wonderful Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.