Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Anza-Borrego, Take 2

After going out to see the wildflowers and realizing we hadn't hit the peak bloom yet -- and that more rain was in the forecast for the following week -- I mentioned to Darrick that an optimal time to see them would probably be in two weeks' time. He liked the idea, and flew down for the weekend of March 20.

This time, the bloom was a bit more pronounced. We also drove back out into the canyon as far as I could get without getting my car stuck like a beached whale. We ended up playing a game of "let's see how far this other car goes" with a rental Hyundai Accent. We both gave up at the same point when we realized there was no going beyond the ditch and stream we would've needed to cross to continue. We ended up talking to the guys from the rental car, who were from Maine and admitted to following us to see how far we could get, thinking that maybe we knew what we were doing since I had California plates. Wrong.

After purchasing lemonade and Avocados on the way out of the dirt road adventure, we decided to proceed on to Salton City to see how much had changed in the last few years. Last time we were there was near the height of the housing boom, and lots of homes were under construction in a ghost city that clearly shouldn't have any homes being built there. Our return found many of those homes to be abandoned in various stages of (in)completion. Depressing.

From Salton City, I decided it'd be fun to take I-8 back to San Diego instead of going the way we came. This ended up adding about an hour to our trip, as we had to drive all the way down and out to El Centro to hit the freeway. We stopped at a Carl's Jr. in Brawley for a snack, and the cashier gave me the Senior discount for some reason. Darrick wasn't as lucky.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere off of I-8 near Jacumba (specifically, right here if we're getting technical) we stopped on our way home to take some pictures of the night sky. Darrick had the good lens setup for this, and he has those pictures. As of this writing, he has not shared them yet. Just as we were leaving, we were "stopped" and interrogated by a Border Patrol officer who wanted to know what the heck we were doing out in the middle of nowhere so late at night, and so close to the border. Our "night sky pictures" excuse seemed to satisfy him, and we were on our way.

A photo album containing all the pictures I took on the trip is here.

No comments: