Anza-Borrego Desert

 

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. 

Bright pink beavertail cactus, with some red-flowered chuparosa (Justicia californica) (better examples to come when I get to Joshua Tree) on the side.

Rain coming down from the mountains, bringing the desert floor to life.

Creosote bush scrub at the bottom of Hellhole Canyon.

Flowering barrel cactus.

Same cactus after the rain passed.

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.

Spiny cholla cactus (of which there are many species).

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).

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.

Nevertheless, there were still a few nice singles around, like this brittlebush (Encelia farinosa).

Sleeping beauties.

At one point it looked like the ladybug took a drink of the water droplet on this lupine leaf.

Caterpillar in suspense.

Close-up of its pretty (horrifying?) face.

Heading out of the park toward Salton Sea, I spotted another batch of wildflowers just off the road in a sandy wash.

Desert sand verbena (Abronia villosa), with dune primrose and brittlebush.

A nice verbena bloom on the sandy alluvium. This is the area where I saw a lone desert lily (in not very photogenic circumstances).

A pincushion of brittlebush alongside the road. Next stop, the Desert Lily Preserve.

* * *

Desert Log

 

Wildflowers in a sandy wash, Anza-Borrego Desert (3/31/2024).

The moon and stars aligned serendipitously to send me on an April Fool's errand -- not of a thousand-mile round-trip to the desert, but more like 1,714.9 miles (to put a little bit of a fine point on it). Just when I thought I wasn't going to go this year, I learned about the Sunday storm heading for Southern California and started champing at the bit all over again. Thankfully my wife was free to keep an eye on Coco and understanding of my need for speed. And it was a speedy trip indeed, beginning at 3:30 a.m. Sunday and ending at about 3 p.m. today.

The main event was a visit to Anza-Borrego where I expected the weather to be awful (but in a good way), and sure enough, 300 miles into the drive I reached the Grapevine, where the car thermometer read 41 degrees and where snow cake-frosted the surrounding hilltops. My timing was perfect on arrival at the desert, where heavy gray storms poured out of the mountains in waves.

From Anza-Borrego I drove out to the Desert Lily Preserve where I scoured the earth in vain. Not a single desert lily could be seen. That was kind of a long way to go to get skunked. I've never seen desert lilies before and had my heart set on finally finding some. (I had actually seen one back in Anza, so I wasn't completely skunked.) Crestfallen, I then realized I'd forgotten to look for ghost flower back in Anza! Two skunks in a row! 

Not that they are unanimously entranced by all who encounter them, but it's kind of a personal thing I have about ghost flowers. I love their name, of course, and also the spooky gossamer of their petals, but this was also one of the very first desert wildflowers I learned way back on my first trip to Anza, which was back in the last century. I had not seen one since.

So I'm walking dejectedly back to the car when -- what's this? -- a ghost flower, right there in the lily preserve! I counted three small plants in all, and no others nearby. All was not lost on the lily front, either. As I began driving back toward the freeway to retrace my steps back to Joshua Tree, I spotted desert lilies galore just off the side of the road. There was barely enough light left in the day to fire off a few frames.

I spent the night sleeping in my car on the side of the road near the southern entrance to Joshua Tree. It isn't great to sleep in a Mazda 3's laid-back passenger seat, but I thought of it as being quite a bit better than sleeping on an airplane. I had a pillow and sleeping bag, even, and I woke up rested and ready for the day. Unfortunately, most of the storm had blown out overnight, leaving just a few stray clouds and lots of wind, which added an extra challenge for my wildflower photography. 

Looking at my map as I was about to leave Joshua Tree I saw that I was closer to Carrizo Plain than Death Valley, and I considered nixing the Death Valley leg. But I also figured Carrizo's Soda Lake Road could use at least another day of drying out, and I was eager to see Lake Manly (which I'd last seen in 2005) and Dante's View (which I've never seen before).

I was disappointed to reach Death Valley's Ashford Mill area where there was a superbloom of daisies in '05. There was hardly anything this time, and "hardly anything" about sums up the rest of the valley. It looked like debris flows scoured out all the plants. If that is what happened, a flood-scouring can look as depressing on a landscape as a bad fire. Mineralizing the biota isn't pretty to living beings like us.

I spent last night in the car again, this time near Carrizo Plain (in a pull-out a short ways up Elkhorn Grade Road). The view of the hills from Elkhorn Grade showed green and some yellow, but nothing like the colorful jubilee of yesteryear. Entering the national monument from the south I encountered lots of daisies, fiddleneck, and loco weed, and a few small patches of owl's clover. Compared to many years, especially drought years (remember those?),  it was fantastic, but compared to last year it's not there yet.

And what else is not there yet is a passable road. After driving through a couple of sketchy patches of muddy ruts and eroded cracks I thought to myself, "I'm going to keep going because, if it was impassable in an ordinary car, they would have a sign." Right? Indeed, a short distance past the Traver Ranch ruin (and pit toilet), there was a sign: "Road becoming impassable. Vehicles stuck in mud." I decided to go no farther, and I envied the next photographer who came along in a serious off-road pickup truck that even had a snorkel (for crossing deep water). I forgot to ask his name, but he said he just got the truck last year and that he's from Santa Barbara and can easily return in a week or two to see if the bloom has improved. He headed off into the boondocks like he was going for an easy Sunday drive.

My own drive home was through the Cuyama Valley, a lazy and lovely route with  hardly any traffic, and green grass and oaks all over the mountains (and lots of yellow on the south-facing Caliente Range). You could probably do a photo feature on that stretch of road alone (including all the agriculture), and even though I didn't stop to take pictures (wanting to get home before rush hour), it was a brilliant drive to end the trip with.

Where else, but Joshua Tree?

Lake Manly, near Badwater in Death Valley (4/1/2024).

Wildflower view toward the Temblor Range at Carrizo Plain (4/2/2024).

* * *

Down Home

 

Potted Mushroom

At the bottom of this post back in early January I mentioned the Poison Pie mushrooms [UPDATE: spore print below] that were growing in my potted coast live oaks. Today I saw that they were back, just a few days before the rainy season officially comes to a close at the end of this month (according to the New York Times). 

My plans for a thousand-mile round-trip drive down to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park seem to have evaporated like desert dew, hampered by commitments at home and windy conditions in Borrego Springs. 

It's kind of far to go down there for a day or two, and it's been tricky trying to find a longer opening, in part due to our ailing Coco. A semi-feral outdoor cat who adopted us about eight years ago, she's been having some age-related medical issues, and even seems to have caught a cold (I'd never heard a cat sneeze so much!). Now she hardly ever goes any farther than our sunny stair stoop, and she needs increased care and companionship. So, it's not the best time for me to take off for several days on photo safari.

I was going to drive up to Mt. Tam to check on the trail cams today, but it looks like we're going to be in for some sunny weather soon, so I think I'll wait a few days and ride my ebike up there when the roads have dried out early next week. 

In the meantime I'm staying close to home, enjoying the cloudscapes, the townsends warblers singing in the trees, the chickadees gathering Coco's cat hair for nesting material, and the blooming of orange Clivia flowers and white calla lilies in the yard. Just the other day I heard a hermit thrush singing in the neighbor's oak tree for the first time ever. And the leaves on our hazel tree have just started to unfold (I noticed them coming out on Mt. Tam in early March). 

Clivia flower in calla lily leaf.

Finally, some vertical build-up action for the timelapse....

Rear Window Timelapse, 3/28/24

Getting the FZ-80 about as close as it can get.

Calla lilies are kind of irresistible.

The side of my neighbor's house was in the background so I made a little pop-art....

Unfurling hazel leaves (from a branch pressed against the side of my neighbor's house), 3/25/2024.

I rarely see the bison lying down, but lately they're doing it all the time. There was just this one out there today while the rest of the herd was lined up for lunch close to their feeding pen. 

This tree in Golden Gate Park looks great all the time, but sometimes the light makes it magical (more so than I was able to capture in this shot, unfortunately). I usually pass this tree riding my bike downhill at about 25 mph, and I rarely stop to admire it. Sometimes it seems like things look more interesting in passing than they do standing still.

[UPDATE] This morning's spore print of the poison pie (Hebeloma crustuliniforme).

* * *

Moonshot

 

Full moon rising behind Twin Peaks at 8:34 p.m. on 3/25/2024

I was in the living room reading The Right Stuff, Tom Wolf's book about the first American astronauts, when my wife called me to the back window. "And you'd better hurry!" 

Moonrise was at 8:07 p.m., so it took about 27 minutes to rise to the above position. I'm pretty confident about the time the photo was taken because I just recently re-set the clocks on my cameras to DST.

Full moon over Twin Peaks, with car in the foreground. Some clouds near the top of the moon reduced the exposure there just enough to get some detail on its surface.

Full moon setting this morning over the Eastern Sierra from Bishop.

* * *

High Country Beauty

 

Beautiful morning in the high country, about 9 a.m., 3/23/2024.

Passing storm evening view at about 6 p.m., 3/24/2024.

And still more snow this morning, 3/30/2024 (it even snowed on the valley floor).

Close to 5:30 p.m., 3/30/2024

Morning of 4/6/2024

Morning of 4/14/2024: the last snow of the season?

Morning of 5/5/2024....

* * *

Waiting for Rain

 

Ocean Beach Esplanade

It's after 3 p.m., and I'm still waiting for our "80 percent chance of rain after 2 p.m." I do like the rain at times, especially if I've already enjoyed a long walk and a bike ride on the beautiful morning that precedes it. 

I probably should have set the Sutro Tower timelapse (below) to run while I was on my bike, but I thought I had more time before the clouds would blot out the blue sky. Between the time I snapped a photo of Golden Gate Park's newly rehabilitated Middle Lake slowing filling up with water from the adjacent casting pools, and the short time later that I snapped the beach view toward Mt. Tam above, the sky had mostly filled up with clouds.

Nevertheless, I captured a timelapse once I got home, in part to add an audio track using my new Fender Mustang Micro amp -- a guitar amplifier that is literally 1.5 inches by 3 inches in size (the sound only plays in your headphones). I also had to download free recording software called Audacity. 

It's a new world. I have not been keeping up with digital music devices over the years and am looking forward to exploring the possibilities.

Someone parked their zoo on 10th Avenue today.

Two years of construction is finally coming to an end at Middle Lake, and water is slowly filling it up. It's not open yet, and I only got this phone snap because a gate had been briefly left open and unattended. For scale, those are two Canada geese inside the red circle.

Rear Window Timelapse

(3/22/2024)

* * *

Spring Hike

 

View from Mt. Tam's north side near Barth's Retreat, with Mt. Saint Helena in the distance.

My wife was able to get the day off for a true spring break, so we hiked a loop from Rock Spring: Cataract Trail to Mickey O'Brien Trail to Barth's Retreat to Portrero Meadows to Rifle Camp, then back along the Lagunitas-Rock Spring Road to the Benstein Trail and the Simmons Trail to close the loop back at the Cataract Trail.

The hike started out chilly, around 45 degrees just after 9 a.m., but warmed up by the time we reached Barth's Retreat, where I spotted a chickadee entering a nest cavity in a dead Douglas fir. I trained my camera on the hole, but I either picked the wrong one, or the sneaky devil came out a different hole. It appeared to have been carrying away a poop sack as it exited, but I missed the shot. 

The air was so fresh with spring that it was actually perfumed in places where the sun's warm rays volatilized aromatic molecules from the forest that graced our nasal passages with their tantalizing bouquets. We passed a raucous group of acorn woodpeckers that were chasing each other through the high branches and sometimes grappling, then twirling together as they fell, only to break it off well before they hit the ground. I also saw a pair of hummingbirds having a tussle very near the ground, but they flew away as I approached with my camera. Hopefully I interrupted fighting rather than mating.

We saw lots of calypso orchids in the woods, and shooting stars in the wet meadows, and a single star lily just beginning to bloom at Potrero Meadow. We also saw our first western fence lizards of the season.

I resisted pulling out my camera until we enountered this delicious backlight on some sedges and horsetails in Cataract Creek.

I often pass up the first few potential subjects, but once I do finally break out the camera I start shooting just about everything that catches my fancy, like this white slime mold (possibly Brefeldia maxima).

Tortoiseshell warming its tattered wings on a sunny trunk.

Zoomed-in view over green hills and remnants of fog, toward Mt. Saint Helena.

This is a cross-section of a redwood that had fallen across the trail at Potrero Meadow. I count about 30 rings.

The bee flies were buzzin' at Barth's Retreat. I was surprised to be able to catch one with the FZ80.

Star Lily in the Sun

Dried Sulfur Tufts

This was the most stout and vividly colored calypso orchid we saw all day.

It looks like this banana slug is interested in poop, but I think it's actually some  crapped-out poor-man's licorice.

And this was the most unusual inflorescence of calypsos that we saw.

And how about the most laid-back acorn woodpecker ever. I couldn't believe it let me get so close, and it never did fly away.

A blue-belly takes in the sun...

...and shows off with some burly push-ups.

The following are just some recent shots from local walks.

Purple pistil, golden anthers, and cloud-white petals at Strybing Arboretum.

Spring color at Strybing Arboretum.

Spring growth always creates a tunnel of plants on this set of stairs, but the bonus was the Echium coming into bloom and beginning to hum with visiting bees.

At the top of the stairs I spotted this juvenile red-tailed hawk. I could tell it was a juvenile in part because it didn't fly away, as the adults usually do. Also, its breast feathers were not as white as an adult's.

In addition to red-tails, there was a red house over yonder.

"It's spring!" exclaimed the man on horseback.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. ThisTricholoma equestre was actually photographed many years ago, in January, near Barth's Retreat.

* * *