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| Ocotillo in creosote bush scrub, Hell Hole Canyon |
The last day of March (Easter Sunday) began when I woke up at 2:30 a.m. and hit the road an hour later, arriving in rainy Anza-Borrego Desert State Park around 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I remembered squeezing in my last trip there on a long weekend when I was working four days a week, and being amazed that I could so quickly drive to a place so utterly foreign to, say, Mt. Tamalpais or Pt. Reyes -- a place where the average annual rainfall is just 5 or 6 inches -- and still be back at work on Monday.
The shots below are laid out chronologically, with the first stop being some colorful beavertail catus and spindly ocotillo that I encountered coming down from the mountains on Road S22 on the eastern side of the park. I guess because I've only made a handful of quick photo trips to Anza-Borrego, the landscape didn't seem as familiar as I expected, and Borrego Springs has gone from a sleepy, tiny town to a bustling, tiny town.
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| Bright pink beavertail cactus, with some red-flowered chuparosa (Justicia californica) (better examples to come when I get to Joshua Tree) on the side. |
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| Rain coming down from the mountains, bringing the desert floor to life. |
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| Creosote bush scrub at the bottom of Hellhole Canyon. |
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| Flowering barrel cactus. |
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| Same cactus after the rain passed. |
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| Barrel cactus flowers up close. I was glad I'd brought my umbrella. I only needed it for a little while, and it dried out very quickly between rain squalls. |
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| Spiny cholla cactus (of which there are many species). |
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| I'd heard about the presence of white-lined sphynx moth caterpillars but couldn't find any for the first couple of minutes. I thought I'd blown my timing, but once I spotted the first one, the rest were everywhere. Some were light-colored like this one, while others were much darker. They were all feasting on dune evening primrose (Oenothera deltoides). |
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| Wildflower assortment along Henderson Canyon Road, where the caterpillars were. Patches like this were no longer common by the time I was there. I was actually a little disappointed to have missed the bloom when it was more fresh and spread out, earlier in the month. |
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| Nevertheless, there were still a few nice singles around, like this brittlebush (Encelia farinosa). |
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| Sleeping beauties. |
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| At one point it looked like the ladybug took a drink of the water droplet on this lupine leaf. |
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| Caterpillar in suspense. |
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| Close-up of its pretty (horrifying?) face. |
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| Heading out of the park toward Salton Sea, I spotted another batch of wildflowers just off the road in a sandy wash. |
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| Desert sand verbena (Abronia villosa), with dune primrose and brittlebush. |
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| A nice verbena bloom on the sandy alluvium. This is the area where I saw a lone desert lily (in not very photogenic circumstances). |
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| A pincushion of brittlebush alongside the road. Next stop, the Desert Lily Preserve. |
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