Nature Where I Live: San Francisco: Desert Spring, Pt. 3 of 4

Fossil Falls, Inyo County

I've been looking for a chance to check out Fossil Falls ever since a friend visited there a few years back. I had never even heard of it.

The day's plan was to drive from Joshua Tree to California City to look for desert candles in bloom, then detour up to "the falls" before heading on to my next stop at Carrizo Plain. However, I got to California City just as the sun was going down and was unable to find any desert candles, a plant I have only seen in gorgeous pictures from the mountains bordering Carrizo Plain. Since my car can't really access those mountains, I hoped to see some elsewhere.

When I couldn't find a motel or any real reason to stick around California City, I continued my drive up to Fossil Falls. The moon still hadn't come up, so it was pitch dark when I arrived, and I put on my headlamp to get some dinner out of the cooler in the back of the car. That's when I noticed two bright, silvery spots under a nearby picnic table (that I could only barely make out). As I stared at the spots I wondered if someone had left their child's toy behind. Then the spots disappeared, and I wondered if I had been seeing things -- and then the bright orbs reappeared! That's a critter hunkered down under the picnic table.

The critter eventually got tired of me shining a bright headlamp in its direction and got up to walk back into the brush, revealing itself to be a bobcat! The cat stopped and turned its head once more to check up on me, then disappeared. Another unphotographable highlight of the trip.

Although there is a nearby campground, I didn't want to try to find a site in the dark, so I just slept in the car at the trailhead parking area. Later in the morning, after I got back from the falls and was having a breakfast of overnight oats, a guy pulled up and parked his pick-up truck, got out with its engine still running and music playing, looked over the interpretive display signs for a few minutes, then got back in his truck and drove away.

Despite the fact that I was laid out all night in the reclined passenger seat of my small car, I actually overslept a little bit. This was the landscape that greeted my eyes.

It's a very short walk to the falls, but I still couldn't get there in time to photograph the color that briefly lit the sparse morning clouds. This is another view back toward the Eastern Sierra.

Fossil Falls with First Light on the Mountains

The crazy geological formations here did not disappoint.

With water pooled in many of the depressions in the rocks, I wondered if there is ever a time when Fossil Falls actually has a waterfall. The glacier-fed Owens River that carved the volcanic canyon dried up 10,000 years ago.