Desert Lilies to Death Valley

 

Desert lilies with verbena and creosote bush along Desert Center-Rice Road, just south of the Desert Lily Sanctuary.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I couldn't find any lilies in the sanctuary despite arriving with a lucky rainbow in the distance, and I wondered if the ground has become more gravelly over the nearly 70 years since Tasker and Beula Edmiston first saw them here, making the land less conducive to growing lilies.

As I left the sanctuary and accelerated to driving speed I suddenly spotted numerous desert lilies growing just a little distance into the desert near the road. The sun came out in my heart, and I hit the brakes to pull over, with little daylight left to burn. 

After a short visit with the lilies I drove to Joshua Tree where I spent the night near the south entrance, and where I was awakened a few times by a chatty mockingbird who must have been singing to the beautiful half-moon arcing across the sky. By morning the mockingbird's singing had died down, but the wind had come up, very much alive. The car thermometer read 47 degrees, but I was warm in my down jacket. I skipped making coffee and ate more of my pasta salad for breakfast before trying to do some photography in the area around my parking spot. (For three days I ate pasta salad, baby carrots and hummus, potato chips, and trail mix.)

I exited Joshua Tree at Twentynine Palms, then took Amboy Road north to Historic Route 66 which was open as far as Kelbaker Road, which I used to traverse Mojave National Preserve up to SR 127 which took me to Death Valley.

The entrance doesn't even have a recognizable driveway. You basically just pull off the road into an open, gravelly area.

Pulling in, I wasn't entirely sure I was in the right place...

...until I reached the sun-parched interpretive sign, which says the Edmistons discovered this place on Easter Sunday 1957, and the 2,000-acre site was proteced by the BLM on Easter Sunday 1968. Just for the record, I was there on Easter Sunday 2024....

Although I found no lilies in the sanctuary, I was graced with this ghost flower (Mohavea confertiflora), an old friend I hadn't seen since 1994.

Desert lily (with soaproot-like leaves) and pink desert sand verbena. The sand really was pinkish -- or at least it appeared so in the last light of day.

Hurrying back to the car after shooting the lilies (wanting to get to Joshua Tree before full dark), I had to stop and get the gear back out again when I spotted this crop of desert broomrape (Orobanche cooperi). I love how this non-photosynthetic plant pushed out of the ground like a mushroom.

This was the wind-tossed wildflower patch next to the pull-out where I spent the night.

I love the rocks in Joshua Tree. These are overlooking a sandy wash that was still quite damp. This also is near my overnight sleeping spot...

...as was this chuparosa in the company of several blooming ocotillos.

Same wash still, with some evening primrose in bloom...

...and this guy sleeping it off inside one of the blossoms (which you just make out in the previous photo).

Ocotillo close-up of the leaves and bark.

Ocotillo branches.

Canterbury Bells (Phacelia campanularia).

A closer view.

Creosote Bush (Larrea tridentata) and Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens).

As I drove and drove, I was worried I'd somehow missed the Cholla Gardens, but they finally turned up quite a bit farther into the park than I remembered. I also mis-remembered them being on a steeper slope. I also remembered, correctly for a change, that my wife and I pretty much had the place to ourselves when we came through many years ago (April 10, 2007). This time the parking lot was packed, and people were roaming all over the place.

The jumping chollas, or teddy-bear chollas (Cylindropuntia bigelovii), formed an island surrounded for miles by creosote bush scrub. Even stranger is the possibility that the whole garden consists of only one individual that has reproduced itself vegetatively.

While I was gingerly walking around and setting up my camera I heard a young boy shout out in frightened surprise, "I thought I could do it!" Apparently he'd  tried to pet a teddy bear and found out why they call it "jumping" cholla. Shortly after that came his anguished cry of, "Dad! No!" as I imagined his father trying to unhook the cactus. 

Pinkish granite in Joshua Tree.

I think this wild rhubarb, or Tanner's dock (Rumex hymenosepalus), was along Amboy Road. When I saw them I went from 65 to 0 much more quickly than I can accelerate the other way around.

I don't even recall where this is, but probably still along Amboy Road.

This was another stop along the way, just a random expanse of wildflowers in the middle of nowhere. Despite the lonely locale, I could see a cell tower in the distance, and I did in fact have excellent cell service (as I did in many other out-of-the-way locales, allowing me to text my wife with numerous selfies).

I kept thinking I should stop to take a picture of one of these cute desert tortoise signs, but it wasn't until I stopped to check out the old Kelso train depot that I finally did so.

The drive down the mountains into Death Valley was interesting, but a kind of depression hit me when I reached Ashford Mill, where my hopes of seeing lots of wildflowers, as I had in 2005, were dashed. [4/20/2024 UPDATE: I was too early for the wildflowers!]

As I continued driving north I didn't really see any signs of life on the alluvial plain on either side of the road. Also, I drove for quite a while before Lake Manly came into view, and I thought I'd missed my chance to see it. When I finally got there I took a few photos with my DSLR, then switched to the FZ80 for just about the rest of my very brief jaunt through the park.

I was briefly driving behind a pick-up with two kayaks loaded on top, but they were just passing through. I believe the lake became too shallow for kayakers a few weeks ago.

People were enjoying the lake near Badwater.

Not only is Badwater the lowest point in North America, it was the warmest point on my three-day drive, reaching 81 degrees. (The low would be 38 degrees in Carrizo Plain.)

This guy was enjoying the lake without the crowd.

A dust devil gives an idea of the wind out there.

You gotta love Death Valley's geologic features. I just wish there had been some colorful spring wildflowers to put in the foreground.

There were many of these golden evening primrose flowers (Camissonia brevipes) here and there, making them the sole exception to the rule of no wildflowers. These were seen on the way up to Dante's View.

Here's a desultory snapshot from Dante's View, with his inferno below. Unfortunately there were no decent wildflowers to put in the foreground, and the harsh late-afternoon light was putting the Panamint Range in shadow. I did not break out the DSLR.

After taking their picture with their phone, I chatted awhile with a friendly young couple from Ontario, Canada, who'd flown in from San Diego. They thought Death Valley was great, including the heat, since it was still quite icy back home. As for me, I kept drinking water to stave off an incipient dehydration headache. Some of us San Franciscans can't take the heat much past 65 degrees!

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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.

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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).

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