Anza Borrego March 2010

We went camping for a weekend in Anza Borrego State Park.  We decided to go in March to see some of the wildflowers.  Anza Borrego is known to be really pretty when a lot of flowers are in bloom.  We were able to see quite a few flowers during our hike on Saturday, but there were still a lot of buds.  I think we missed the full bloom by a week or two.

Day 1, Friday

We left home about 2:30pm and drove through Ramona and Julian.  It’s amazing how the scenery changes along the way.  Once you get out of Poway, you are in the country…which is different than the country we are used to back in Kansas.  Once you are in Julian, the elevation is 4200 ft.  The road is 2 lane most of the way and pretty windy once you pass Julian to go back down the mountain.  Once you are down the mountain, you are pretty much in the desert. 

We got to our campsite about 4:30pm.  We reserved a spot in the Tamarisk Grove Campground.  It was the only campground on the reservation system of the 2 that had spots left when I reserved ours.  I’m glad we got this campground anyway, because it looked nicer and had trees.  The other main campground is Borrego Palm Canyon by the visitor center and all the spots are in the open with no shade trees.  I guess it has the advantage of being closer to the tourist center and you can probably see the stars better and they have RV spots.  Tamarisk Grove is all tent camping with only about 20 spots. 

Anza Borrego is one of the only, if not the only, state park you can pretty much camp wherever you want.  You don’t necessarily have to camp in one of the 3 reserved sites (the Horse Camp is the 3^rd one).  The only rule is to have your fire contained.

When we arrived, the ranger booth was closed, so we just drove around the circle looking at the spots that were left.  At Tamarisk, you don't have an assigned spot, it's first come first serve.  We decided on campsite 8 as it was one of the last with some tree cover that was not in the middle.  We set up camp and started a fire and relaxed by the fire.  I love camping; it’s so relaxing and peaceful to be hanging out outside.

For dinner our first night, we kept it simple with roasted hot dogs.  It’s about one of the only times we eat hot dogs….besides baseball games.  We always end the night with smores!

We froze in our tent our first night.  It gets pretty cold in the desert at night.  We had 2 big blankets, but they weren’t enough.

Day 2, Saturday

One of the downsides of camping is waking up early.  What can I say, I like to sleep in a little on the weekends.  If your fellow campers don’t wake you up early, the sun usually will.  We woke up about 7:30am and started a small fire to make some coffee and breakfast.  We made coffee with a percolator and had bacon and fried eggs for breakfast.  We bought a cast iron skillet to bring with us on this camping trip.  We don’t have a camp stove yet, because most of the campsites we go to have a little rack on the fire rings.  Besides we haven’t done any primitive camping yet to need a camp stove.

After breakfast and some much needed coffee, we headed to the visitor center to get some updated information about the wildflowers.  At the visitor center, we asked a lady at the counter about hikes that she recommended.  I didn’t realize there were so many hikes in the park.  She pointed out ones that would have wildflowers and another one (The Slots) that was popular with locals and the photographers.  I had originally planned to hike at Palm Canyon, but she said it might be crowded because it’s a really popular hike.  We decided to go anyway. 

We started on the Alternate Path, which is not where most people start, so it was pretty secluded.  This path took us up the mountainside a little and over to the river where it connects with the main path.  Once we got to the main path and headed back to the palm grove, we started seeing a lot of people.  We finally made it back to the palm grove and ate our packed lunch of PB&J sandwiches, chips, and apples under the palm trees.  By the time we started heading back to the parking lot, the clouds rolling in looked like rain clouds. 

We then headed over to Coyote Canyon, because it was another spot that was supposed to have the most wild flowers at the time.  There were lots of people here just walking in the sand and grass looking at the flowers.  I’m glad we did go there, because that’s where we found our desert lily.  The desert lily is like the prize wildflower in the desert.  We passed another couple looking at flowers and they asked us if we’d been able to find any desert lilies.

After leaving Coyote Canyon, we noticed the rain clouds were getting thicker and it was raining in some places.  It’s pretty flat in Borrego Springs, where it is surrounded by mountains, so you could see the weather pretty well around there.  We decided to make it back to camp before dark and any rain.

Once back at camp, we noticed it was a little breezy.  The breeze was cold too; it made it hard to stay warm.  We got a fire going and made us some dinner.  I didn’t want to have hot dogs two nights in a row, so we made pita pizzas.  I searched online for ideas before we left home.  We made them using pitas topped with pizza sauce, pepperonis, and mozzarella.  They turned out pretty good.

We rearranged some of the blankets and wore our long johns to bed and was able to stay a little warmer our second night.  And yes, we brought thermal pants with us as I was expecting it be a little cold.  Good thing we did!

Day 3, Sunday

It was raining lightly when we woke up.  We woke up really early due to sound of other campers packing up.  It must have been a little after 6am.  We got a small fire going when the rain let up to make our coffee and some breakfast.  We decided to make an egg scramble with eggs, bacon and mozzarella cheese.  It was very tasty.

We were planning on going to The Slots trail today.  But, we decided to head home instead after breakfast, because of the rain.  We weren’t prepared to get all wet while hiking.

We headed back to Julian to stop and have some apple pie.  Julian is famous for apples pies.  They have an apple fest in the fall.  It was also snowing when we got up to Julian!  We went into Mom’s Pie House for our fix.  It’s a cute little place decorated like an old country farm house.  Mike got an apple crumple pie with ice cream and I went for the apple dumpling after I heard the guy describing it to someone else.  He made it sound really good.  And, it was really good! 

We left Julian and decided to go back home through Cuyamaca State Park and Alpine.  It was fun going this way in the snow.  The snow was coming down pretty heavy!  I was amazed to see this much snow 2 hours from San Diego.  It was kind of hard to get my head around it.  It was like we were in Colorado or something.  Once we got out of the elevation it was just raining and we made it home by noon.

Now that we know Anza Borrego is that close to us, we may try to take some daytrips out there just to hike around.

Trip Summary

Lodging - Tamarisk Grove Campground #8

Food - Mom's Pie House

Activities - Borrego Palm Canyon Nature Trail