After two days in Los Angeles, it was time to say goodbye to L”s friends and Tinseltown. We were off to the Anza-Borrego Desert, a few hours drive. I had never heard of Anza-Borrego, but L’, who has already hiked in Death Valley, wanted to visit another desert socal117[1]park. The drive out was uneventful and we got to the park’s visitor center by mid afternoon to get some hiking suggestions and pick up a map. We then checked into the hotel and returned to the park for a hike to a set of palm trees and oasis (the Palm Canyon trail).  It’s about 3 miles round trip and we finish just as it’s getting dark. It’s neat to see water and palm trees in the middle of the desert. After the hike we return to the hotel for showers and dinner at the adjacent restaurant.

We now have one full day to explore the park. The park is huge (the largest California state park and the second largest in the lower 48 states) so we use our guidebooks to find some things of interest that aren’t too far away. We visit three trails to see Native American pictographs, morteros (holes the Native Americans bore into the rocks to grind up plants), and the Marshall South home. Each of these are moderately short hikes and we drive between them. L’ conveniently omitted telling me beforehand that to get to nearly all of the interesting hiking in Anza-Borrego, we would be driving on dirt roads. No wonder we took my car. The dirt roads, or as the map calls them "primitive roads", are in decent shape and you can easily go about 10mph. Except for getting filthy, the car survived unscathed.

socal154[1] Each of the hikes were interesting. The pictographs show that human activity has been present here for a long time, well before Europeans came. The moreteros and remains of the Native American village show more human presence in the desert. The South’s home shows what an eccentric (that is, nutcase) can do if they really want to (a family lived in the desert without utilities in the 1930s for 15 years).

After all the hikes we drive back to the hotel and do some online research to find a place for dinner. Many places are closed for Christmas, so we struggle to find something. We finally do and then figure out that the address we have is out of date. After much longer than it should have been, we find the place and have dinner before heading home to go to sleep.

On our way out of the park, we do a short hike at the Earth Narrows trail. It’s a narrow canyon type thing that would be more interesting if I were geologist. There are different types of rock as we walk and the change between types is obvious; however, we don’t really know why this is significant or why we should care.

socal287[1] We then head out from the park towards the town of Julian, California. It’s a town that dates to the mid 1800s and we’re surprised how many people are walking around the downtown area. We find a lunch place, wander the town for a little while picking up some candy, and then go for a hike at nearby William Heise County Park. We then start the drive home making it past Bakersfield for the night and finish up the drive the following morning to conclude our fun road trip to Southern California.

The full photo album is here:

http://sanjoseabrams.com/photos/SouthernCaliforniaDec2009/index.html