Southern California

---

Road trips are always fun. But I’ve always wanted to do this trip in a long time. Winter time. Can’t go north. So, south it is!
It’s been a while since we’d been there. So, I will have to refresh my memory here and there.


We had covered Los Angeles a month back during thanksgiving. So, we were going to cover other places than L.A. There are a bunch of beautiful National Parks in that area. Deserts! Here we come.


Thu, 22 Dec 2005
We were going to leave very early next morning (3:00 am). As usual, we got butterflies in our stomach. We were so excited. I don’t think we slept until 10.30 pm or so.


Fri, 23-24 Dec 2005
I got up first at 1:30 am. Just could not sleep anymore. We loaded most of our stuff into the car, last night itself  so, we got ready, loaded our food stuff & good to go. We were late by 30 minutes, but we were sure to catch up. It was winter. Sun did not come up until 7.30 am. By then we had gone south, real south. The first interesting place we came across was Red Rock Canyon State Park. It was surprising because, I was not so sure we could cross it. I had read about it in the forums of RTA that it is CA’s own Bryce canyon.
The sun was not yet up beyond these mountains, so it was all beautiful color. After a short stop, we continued our way to the Death Valley. As we were driving by, towns became more and more sparse and lesser and lesser in size. Of course, long, empty roads became more common that I could not help crossing my fingers and pray “Not a flat tire, please, God!”
This trip is going to be a lot of deserts, so, it is going to be exciting! Being a first timer is fun. Not knowing what to expect is a beautiful feeling. We were thoroughly enjoying every minute of the drive. After a long (really long) drive, through some old ghost-kind towns, we could see the Pinamint Range in the far. They cover Death Valley to the north-west, should I say? In just a flash, I saw something white at the base of the mountains. No kidding. Snow? In Death Valley? No way. Or was it a mirage? I just had no clue what it was. I was going to check it out at the Visitor Center.


Just when I thought we’d reached Death Valley, the road seemed longer and the valley seemed farther. It was a huge climb into the mountains, crazier descent into the valley. I was really happy & glad when I saw the “stovepipe wells” campground. Happy because, we were finally inside the valley. Glad because, we were looking to camp there initially. There was no single tree in the campground to protect you from the Sun’s heat. We wanted to go to the Visitor Center to get further information. The Sun was right on top now, sparing no effort in scorching us.
The first question I asked the Ranger at the Furnace creek visitor center was about the white colour I saw before. They confirmed that it was salt residue.
So many thousands of years ago, there must have been a river flowing there. With no outlet, the water evaporated to leave the salts behind. That was more believable.
We had to camp in and have lunch. We wanted to stay close to the visitor center as it was centrally located. We had 2 options: Furnace creek campground or Texas Springs.
We checked Texas Springs and found no problem with it. We found a shady campsite (#34). One of the best sites that we’d camped. Can’t forget it. $12 a day.
We set up the tent, had lunch and set off to artist’s drive. It was close to sunset. Artist’s palette is the place to be during sunset. The drive is out of the world. We got into the slot canyons and watch the sunset change the color of the rocks. Best way to spend time during sunset. We did the drive one more time before retiring early to our home-for-two-nights. We cooked and had dinner with nothing above us, but the stars…Best dinner, I can bet. The darker it got, the better it got. The sky was filled with stars, maybe at some point, there was no more sky. Just stars! What a world…I think at some point, both of us did not want to get back home. We were fast asleep by 8.30 pm or 9.00 at the most (the low temperature was going to 42F-we were not going to be awake to feel that)
Unfortunately, we felt that. At 5.00 am when we got up to go see the sun rise at Zabriske Point. I remember having dressed in2-3 layers. My teeth were still chattering. It was cold. For a minute we even thought, we would skip the sunrise. But that’s one of the many reasons we came there in the first place.
Fortunately for us, Zabriske Point was a 5 minute drive. We were there before sunrise, took the short walk up to the overlook. It was all dark. Slowly we could see what was before us. Badlands!! Beautiful! Colourful! Sun slowly rose behind us and made the scenery even more vibrant. My shivering diminished with the sun. We weren’t sure if we had the time to take the trail down into the badlands for a loser view. So, we got back, had breakfast, packed lunch, got ready and were started towards the Ubehebe crater. We took the rim trail halfway and turned back to get to Scotty’s castle. The Ranger asked us to lookout for a coyote that was circling around that area. We saw him. On the road to the castle. He looked calm, so we went slowly, took some snaps video, but not for too long. We were scared, rolled up our windows and headed straight to the parking lot. We did not feel like taking the castle tour. We were just hanging around for sometime, had lunch and started toward Mosaic canyon. One of the must-sees in Death Valley. It was indeed very mosaicy. The canyon was majestic. We hiked in some 1-2 miles and turned back as we wanted to be in the sand dunes for the sunset. The walk on the dunes was as difficult as it seemed. We went as far as we could in time to catch the sunset color on the dunes. Sand dunes in the middle of nowhere.


A good shower would do wonders, now. The furnace creek ranch had a shower. So refreshing! We had cook dinner in the dark as sun was long gone by 5.30 pm.
Stars were there for company. Never felt lonely!


Sun, 25 Dec 2005
We were not sure of the sunrise next morning at badwater basin (lowest point in the western hemisphere-284 ft below sea level). But we got up in time to make it to the sunrise there. The sun rose and shone on the black mountains. And we saw it s reflection on badwater. Breathtaking!
We heard that from Dante’s point (road closed due to flash floods in Aug 2004), one could view Mt.Whitney (highest peak in the contiguous 48 states) and badwater. Hope the work on the roads soon.
We hiked to the Natural bridges into the canyon & Devil’s golf course. After we packed our stuff, we headed to golden canyon before leaving Death Valley with lots of memoirs.
After 6 long hours, we were driving into civilization. Night halt: GoodNite Inn, Redlands. Nice place to crash after 2 days camping 


Mon, 26 Dec 2005
Days start early when you are road tripping. Today is no different. Off to Joshua tree National Preserve.
We could see thunder clouds forming in and it was very windy. But the place was so amazing! We’d started to have a soft-corner for deserts by now.
The rocks & boulders were everywhere. There was this cool one-of-a-kind place “cacti garden”. Colourful cacti (???)
A small hike to the barker dam was so refreshing. A dam (with water) in a desert! How much better can it get?
After sunset, we started our long drive into San Diego, not before stopping for a snapshot at Baker's very own tallest thermometer:-)


We obviously checked in late at our hotel. It was a long stay there. Five nights in a row. It was night and we could see Tijuana from there. Yup! We were at the last exit in US into Mexico.


27-30 Dec 2005
The next couple of days were major touristy-San Diego Zoo, Wild Animal park, Sea World & Cabrillo National Monument. We also paid a visit to the local ISCON temple. We enjoyed every bit of each day. San Diego zoo’s Panda viewing took in a lot of time in the queue, but worth it, we’re sure.


Sat, 31 Dec 2005
We checked out around 8.30 am and started driving to Anza Borrego Desert State Park. I was very eager about this place. It is one of the few places in CA that has slot canyons. We heard that the campsites could be filled up, so we made reservations. We picked up a nice site at Borrego Springs. It was like an oasis. After checking with the visitor center, we headed for “the slot”. There were thunderclouds all over, but rain was not in the forecast. Driving our car in the road to the slot was not going very well, so we parked it half way and started walking in that windy way. I could see some cars at a distance so; we knew we were not very far. I was so glad to get into the slot. No wind. What a relief!
We went in like 20-30 minutes until we saw some people come in with their Wrangler (grrrr… of envy)
Once we went up, we wondered how much we missed being down in the slot. It was windier now. Our tent was not so sturdy to stand up to this wind. So, we got all concerned and thought of nothing else until we got back there. True enough! Our tent was no longer there. Our good neighbor, a Good Samaritan, rolled up our tent so that it did not fly away. With all that wind there, we found it a little difficult to set it back up. Even more difficult was not thinking about the tent falling down over the night. It was New Year’s Eve. We had dinner and went to sleep. Our tent was so cozy from the weather outside. We planned to see the New Year’s sunrise. But I could not help get up around midnight. There was all this fireworks. People were having fun. A lot of them lit up lights on their RV’s. A different new year’s experience!


New Year - 1st January 2006
Next morning, we were all fresh to get up and see the sun rise. We could not ask for anything more! It was one of our very good sunrise experiences. After breakfast, we did this Palm canyon trail that started off at the end of our campground. Nice trail to look for big horn sheep. But we were not so lucky, like the lot of other fellow hikers. It probably rained high up and puddles are all filled up, so the sheep don’t need to come down to the valley for water.
On our way back, we heard a ranger mention that someone spotted a mountain lion in that area and they were going to warn everyone else. We were so happy we were finished with it. We went around the park for the rest of the day. In the evening, we hiked up a mountain to get a view. It was all good.


2nd Jan 2006
Not wanting to go back, we started packing. We knew it was raining on the other side of the mountain. So, earlier the better. We started around 10 am. From that time till the time we came to bay area, all we saw was rain and traffic. We saw snow on the San Gabriel Mountains. Lots of waterfalls along I 5 mountains, due to the rains.
We reached home very late. Deserved to call it a night!
Could not have expected a better trip!
Very Satisfying!

:-)

---

Photos

Bad water basin
Black mountains-Reflection!

Zabriske Point
Just before sunrise

The dunes
Death Valley

Artists palette
Slot Canyons below

On the way to Scottys castle
Coyote

Sunset @ Sand dunes
Death Valley

Black mountains
Sunrise, badwater

Tallest thermometer
Baker