TRAVEL: The Anza Borrego Desert

The mountain range that shelters the desert keeps it sunny and dry; a mixed blessing of course, but some years the rains are just right and the wildflowers are in intoxicating plenty. This year, not so much, but still to be found. In this photo of the range a magnificent rainshadow overhangs the peaks.

This is an abandoned Di Giorgio vineyard. The company quit raising grapes when Cesar Chavez began to organize the farmworkers in California, and the conservative directors shut down the fields rather than employ union labor.  They’ve lain vacant for years.  This year they were being cleared - perhaps for solar or a wind farm.

We saw few flowers this year, but my miracle was hiking Palm Canyon, as I usually do, and this was my time to see the bighorn sheep - always we’ve been told to watch for them, but I’d never seen them.  Perhaps this spring is so dry they have to come down to the river in the canyon to drink.  I saw 11 of the, with 3 babies, about 25 feet away, moving leisurely up the streambed, munching plants and sipping.  I was so overwhelmed and gratified to have such a spectacular sighting of wildlife afforded me.  Even Denali hadn’t provided me with this experience this close up.  I thought I was in a documentary.

These were the wildflowers I found:  some wonderful cacti, and Palm Canyon was lovely.  They do try, even in dry years, to bloom forth - they are smaller and hiding, but still to be discovered.

A nostalgic example of mid-century architecture is to found in the Anza - the Palms at Indian Head.  We dined there almost every night, lingering on the patio watching the earth turn from the sun, and enjoying the mountains glowing orange and violet.  The leisure dream of desert living in the waning day and the evening breeze, chatting about our lovely day and its pleasures.