Since we couldn't check in until around 2pm, we headed over to the visitor center to get some general information. They were saying that wildflowers were scarce this year, as they have been for the past few years.
We stopped by Carlee's Bar and Grill for lunch...typical American bar food but it was packed since it was still peak season and there aren't too many places to eat in Borrego Springs. After lunch we headed over to the campsite to unpack and setup. The site itself was nice and came with a shaded bench...just not as secluded as we would have liked.
We spent a few hours driving around looking for the locations of the Ricardo Breceda sculptures. We also drove out to Clark's Dry Lake bed. I'll be back one day to take some landscape pictures of the crack patterns and the mountains. Kinda reminds me of badwater in Death Valley, but the patterns in Anza Borrego are from the dry mud.
We cooked up an early dinner and brought it out to Font's Point. This is a popular sunrise/sunset spot, but only accessible by driving 4 miles out on a sandy/bumpy wash. Most guides recommend 4WD as it can be easy to get stuck in the soft sand, but my high clearance Tacoma had no issues getting out there. When we got to the parking lot it was PACKED so we had to try pulling over on the side of the road. I tried backing up on a sandy incline and ended up getting my wheel stuck. Another passenger saw me stuck, so pulled in front of me so I could attach my strap for him to pull me out of the hole. Out of all the places to get stuck, it was near the parking lot haha.
Font's Point looks out East and most of the clouds didn't light up for sunset that way. I was running around taking pics from various angles.
Jaime taking pics of me...
The patterns and textures of the badlands caused by the rain and wind are pretty cool. Lots of shapes and lots of different colors.
I took one right before the sun dipped behind the mountain.
I also took a panoramic closer to sunset.
I'll have to come back here for sunrise and some milky way shots next time. Kinda sketchy trying to navigate the 4 miles of dirt road in the dark tho. If we came back later in the year, the milky way is best after sunset so maybe I'll go before sunset and hang around until later in the night.
We ended up bringing dinner back to the campsite and eating once we left Font's Point.
Crappy pic of our dinner...Bratwursts, chips, and veggies.
Marshmallows and s'mores for desert!
We headed to bed early, but were woken up by the strong wind that came in overnight. It was pretty much blowing the tent so hard it was knocking us in the head.....so basically we only got a few hours of sleep. Since I was up around 3am anyway I checked the sky and the clouds were still pretty thick and the Milky Way wasn't visible so I skipped going out.
The next morning, we had to cook breakfast on the camp chef in the bed of my Tacoma to block the wind as it was still strong. We had to eat in the car too. Everything not being held down or anchored down pretty much blew away. After breakfast, we walked over to the Palm Canyon trail, a 3-mile hike that leads to one of the largest palm oasis in California.
The hike isn't bad...relatively flat, just un-shaded for the most part.
We headed back to camp to eat a quick lunch and headed back out in search of some other sculptures that we didn't get to visit the first time around.
So Jaime had this idea where she wanted to find a statue where I could back my car up to look like it was chasing us. One of the dinosaurs called the Spinosaurus was a good candidate so we waited until the pull out was free and I backed in.
We then did some other random crap. First one was Jaime on by back running away.
Second one was suppose to be us running away, but Jaime ruined the trio. She said she looked over at me and started busting up instead. So there I was running away, while she was just standing there laughing...
We visited a few other sculptures and spotted the one I knew I wanted to come back for Milky Way shots then headed back into town. We stopped off at the ice cream shop. I had some mocha almond ice cream and J had a root beer float
The strong wind blew all the clouds away so I didn't go out for sunset. So we hung around the site a bit. We had to cook dinner and eat in the truck again...hamburgers this time.
Wind seemed to pickup even more so we didn't make a fire. Luckily it wasn't cold and we just relaxed in the car. The wind was so strong it was shaking the car. We moved the tent behind the car to see if it would block the wind but no dice. So we decided to sleep in the car that night...or at least try. I couldn't sleep at all and by the time 3:30am rolled around I was already up. The wind cleared up the sky nicely so I took off to take some Milky Way pics. I posted these already, but these were my favorites:
I'm just glad I was able to get out one of the mornings to take some shots. Still want to come back for more from other locations.
I headed back to camp a bit before sunrise around 6 and got a little bit of sleep. We woke up to pretty much no wind, no clouds, and just a beautiful morning.
We cooked the classic: bagel hashbrown and a fried egg.
We packed up and made our way home. All in all another good camping trip. We'll be in San Francisco next month. I have some spots lined up that I want to take pics from so here's hoping for some nice photo weather.
Brandon Yoshizawa
B.A.Y | photography
www.bay-photography.com
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Brandon Yoshizawa
B.A.Y | photography
Landscape and Wildlife photography
http://www.bay-photography.com/