2017 Trip Chronicles: Page 3

Sonora Desert Road Trip...onto Anza Borrego State Park 2of3

After exiting Box Canyon in the agricultural region northwest of the Salton Sea, our two vehicles continued into the community of Mecca, where we proceeded to have a difficult time locating a supermarket despite searching on the web on our smartphones. After wasting time, we drove north into the larger city of Coachella and went into a supermarket where we two were the only English speakers and all written signs were in Spanish. After that, we visited a McDonald's, catching up on Internet emails and information before leaving south on SR86 towards Salton City. D noted our watches had changed from Pacific Standard Time to Pacific Daylight Time, springing ahead one hour. Preferring balanced sun time, I strongly dislike society's choice of daylight time. We turned west on SR22, Borrego Salton Seaway. Landscapes increasingly became greener and flowery further west. I was surprised by all the brown-eyed primrose out in the dry, rocky terrain roadside. At Clark Valley, we ventured onto a sandy 4WD road in order to peek out at remote sand dunes I had visited in 2005; however, those dunes had no color at all, indicating again that precipitation was spotty.

The following topographic map link is centered on Borrego Springs in Anza-Borrego State Park, where a few days of this trip are featured:
topo Borrego Valley at Anza-Borrego SP

The following links to the California State Parks official Anza-Borrego State Park website:

Anza Borrego State Park

With temperatures about a hot 94F in Borrego Springs Valley, we toured along Henderson Canyon Road, which had many roadside visitors and looked too trampled for my interests during the trip. Then made a side trip on a dead-end dirt road I'd used to disperse camp at in the past before driving down the Whitaker Horse Camp dirt road. There we walked about at a couple of spots where we found modest subjects to possibly return to later. After that, we went into the town of Borrego Springs that was choked with cars. Unwisely, I decided to try and get into the park visitor center, where we barely managed to get parking space, and bought D his park map, and I caught unreliable brief information about conditions far to the south at Sweeney Pass. A purchase I later found could have been done in a couple of in-town spots. After a stop at the one supermarket, then we were off to Yaqui Meadows, that was my plan A.

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Before the trip, I had carefully researched the topographic map and satellite images for us to drive out on 4WD dirt roads to what I had reason to believe was a most promising area for wildflowers. With difficulty, within a maze of dirt roads, many of which were not on any map, I managed to reach the area about a mile and a half from any paved roads, which indeed was quite green and rather fabulous. A few other vehicles were widely scattered along the dirt road maze. By the time sunset arrived, we had made camp, explored the local area a bit, settled in, taken bottle showers, and were looking forward to working the area in the morning.

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Eastern skies lightened over distant Salton Sea on Monday, March 13, 2017, and I was soon up and outside my Forester over at a strong landscape I had already checked out. My expectation was the sun-illuminated version would look better; however, the above version, taken in warm skylight off thin high clouds with my 30mm lens, worked better than the one an hour later with my 60mm. Note blooming in the foreground blue phacelia, Phacelia distans, brown-eyed primrose, chuparosa, then on the rocky mountain slopes dozens of brittlebush, Encelia farinosa, and ghost flower. While below in the wash were chia, a huge desert lavender, Hyptis emoryi, bush at frame right, creosote bush, Bigelow's monkeyflower, filaree, closed-up Parish's poppy, and desert dandelion. Not only were there wildflowers in the area, but many plants were on steroids, big, robust plants with many blooms.

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We roamed about our local camp zone for about an hour and then set out on a cross-country ramble across the washboard topography of cactus and yucca-covered plateau and washes, with our primary objective to find the wash with dense monkeyflowers, the brilliant magenta colors of which we could spy from a distance. Some of the cactus had begun to bloom, including the above small fishhook cactus, Mammillaria dioica. After much of a mile we descended into the deeper ravine I expected from topo work to contain the better patches, and indeed it was pretty decent, and we took some shots. At this point we were keeping in contact via a walkie-talkie set I had brought along.

I soon moved further out to a large wash on our route and found the motherlode. The large sandy wash side slopes were densely covered with Parish's poppy, Eschscholzia parishii, and Bigelow monkeyflower, Mimulus bigelovii. It was a bit late now in the morning but still reasonable for a few more shots. D appeared about a half hour later, also beaming at the scene. Indeed, our considerable rambling had been productive. We were immediately set on returning the next day early in the morning in the best light. In the above image, ocotillo, Fouquieria splendens, branches stretch up into the sunny blue desert skies. At the center, the tall dried stalk of a desert agave plant from last year also extends into the sky. In the foreground, blue phacelia, Phacelia distans, thrives under a creosote bush while a few brittlebush show just a few early yellow blooms. The two barrel cacti show behind ocotillo branches next to an indigo bush, while a small buckhorn cholla grows a bit left of its base.

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Both in the washes and above on the plateaus, several species of cactus were beginning to bloom. In this image above, a beavertail cactus, Opuntia basilaris, shows off its large bright magenta flowers. Note the beavertail pads that look smooth and thornless to the naked eye are particularly nasty plants one ought never touch because the pads have groups of knife-sharp, tiny hair-like spines that, due to their barbs, go in one direction and are so difficult to extract that one usually ends up waiting for the irritating spines to disintegrate over weeks. Far more impressive are its many buds that will put on a dazzling display in just a week or two. To its right is a large buckhorn cholla, Opuntia bigelovvi. In the foreground mixed in with monkeyflower are small pygmy poppy, Eschscholzia minutiflora.

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I climbed up out of the wash and across yet another rocky intervening plateau, then down into an even wider, sandier wash, and then explored up the wash about one-third mile before concluding the subjects within were rather weak compared to the one we just visited. D was just making his way to this last area when I called him on our walkie-talkie set to let him know I already checked it out. With late morning light getting harsh, we rambled back towards our camp after completing a weary 3.7-mile effort. For the next several hours, we lethargically, in 90F+ temperatures, rested atop our blue plastic tarps in the shade of our vehicles while making lunch and occasionally being productive. Just like many creatures in the environment that hide in their burrows during the heat of the day, only making appearances in the evening or early morning hours.

Late afternoon about 4pm it was still rather warm but at least the bright harsh sun was no longer beating down on us. Grabbing my camera, I explored up our camp area wash about a half mile to where mountain slopes began and our wash doglegged along its base. I worked a couple of modest subjects before returning to camp. With a tall ridge to the west, our sun disappeared early, allowing us to once again grab our cameras and seek out subjects to work in the skylight. Up on the rocky side of the wide wash we were parked in were many patches of ghost flower, Mohavea confertiflora. In the image above it grows with rock daisies, Perityle emoryi.

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In the above image, within a small wash, a dense cluster of color from chuparosa, blue phacelia, and brittlebush. The detail in the labyrinth is quite remarkable, especially the intricate form of the chuparosa branches.

As the Earth's night shadow rose in the eastern dusk, I scrambled about our ocotillo areas to put their branches up against the sky's color.

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Both of us were outside our Subarus before the sun rose on my seventh morning of the road trip on Tuesday, March 14, 2017. The clear eastern sky did not offer any interest in dawn sky images, and we declined to poke around our camp zone. Thus, we agreed to get on the dirt road maze in order to find a place to park closer to the sandy wash we visited Monday. I opened up the Trimble Navigator app as we set off down our dirt road, and it showed that a junction we had driven down briefly a couple of days earlier would bring us to the closest point. A couple of RV campers were set up nearby as we locked our cars and set out across the plains. Although the area is named "Yaqui Meadows," it isn't a meadow in the normal sense but rather just a large expanse of sloping joined bajadas and bedrock cut with numbers of eroding wash arroyos. We could eyeball where to go by using terrain features of the higher mountain slopes to the west. It wasn't long before we reached the target wash and then leisurely prepared for fieldwork over the next half hour while poppies were still not quite open. Set up my tripod for the image above, which was a repeat of a subject I had worked on Monday, arguably with the best color in the wash I was intent on nailing well.

Next up was the image at page top looking down the canyon across Borrego Valley towards distant Coyote Mountain and Santa Rosa Mountains. The large ocotillo frame right was one of the few trees we encountered with actual blooms, as most were still in the less aesthetic bud stage. Desert barrel cactus, Ferocactus cylindraceus, were abundant on the plateau, and many like the one at center frame were starting to bloom with their large yellow flowers

Later back home, I had trouble processing this image with Photoshop Auto-Blend because of blending blurriness with parallax between the ocotillo and distant mountains that Zerene Stacker had no issues with. Auto-Blend also resulted in blurred blending of a few other distant mountain images during the trip, as it often has trouble with areas of really vague and mushy detail. In some of those cases, I resorted to using a layer mask in reveal all mode after alignment to paint in sharp selections from a frame I used infinite focus for. Photoshop Photomerge stitch blending also often results in duplicated terrain, especially at ridge lines, an unacceptable fitting solution versus warping. Focus stack and multi-row, column stitch blending with images with massive detail intended to print large are prone to digital artifacts that may make processing impossible unless one has figured out workarounds.

Information that is not generally available on how-to sites because most such help is at the small web image level. A stitched image may have large pixel dimensions, but unless detail in all areas stands up sharply at magnification levels intended, it is no better than a downsized version in which artifacts can no longer be discerned. Just as printing any image at magnification levels that, at close viewing distances, show a lack of resolution either from blurred elements or digital jaggies. One will thus note, while selecting my enlarged vertical slice views below each image, that all my images are tack sharp top to bottom, left to right, including close-ups.

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Plateau areas between washes often had dense areas of monkeyflowers, especially directly on the wash rims. The above image view with Yaqui Ridge in the background is one such wash rim view looking down into the wash and showing the extensive areas of the wash edge slopes with color. Unlike the wash bottoms where flash floods regularly carry away plants and seeds or the hard plateau surfaces between washes where soils are often thin and hard, the edge slopes offer nicely soft soil conditions. And during windy weather, these depressions in the landscape are more likely to collect settling wind-blown annual seeds than the plateau tops.

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Here in the image above is a view along the top of a wash rim with a large round brittlebush with just buds at center foreground. The rounded plant and rounded edge of the rim play geometrical tricks with the eye, providing a dynamic illusion. Midground, frame right, is a desert agave bearing its towering dried husk monument grown the previous year. Behind a couple of barrel cacti mid-center left are magenta blooms of a beavertail cactus. In a few weeks, the Bigelow's monkeyflower and Parish's poppies will have gone to seed. However, this scene will still be quite colorful, with ocotillo displaying long red flower terminal panicles, brittlebush will be bright yellow balls, and many more cacti will be in peak bloom.

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This next image above was shot from the top of a Yaqui Meadows plateau with a large dense patch of Bigelow's monkeyflower creating a wonderfully colorful scene. Beyond the poppies at foreground center are a couple of buckhorn cholla cacti and a barrel cactus that had fallen over, leaving a dark black end where it entered the ground. Such fallen barrel cacti are common and no doubt the result of wind.

With harsh late morning light upon us again, we headed back to our vehicles where we were met by a friendly barking dog courtesy of an RV camper that came up to us tail wagging for a pat on the back. It was time to depart from the dirt road maze, resupply down in Borrego Springs, and make plans for the following days. After refilling our water bottles, visiting the market, and topping off gas, we drove south a few dozen miles on Highway S2 to Sweeney Pass. However, the landscape was much drier than during my visit in 2005, despite the recommendations of volunteers behind the counter at the visitor center. Oh, there were wildflowers of many species populating roadsides, though numbers were mediocre. A couple of hours later, we were back up in Borrego Valley, where we drove out on a very dusty Diorgio Road that had numerous visitor cars moving in both directions and, in 90F plus midday heat, walked out without any gear most of a mile into desert gold sunflowers to see what the area might offer. Unlike in 2005 or even during my 2008 visit, Coyote Creek did not have any surface water. Weary from that effort, we drove back down the road and conveniently parked in the shade of roadside trees where we lethargically spent the next couple of hours lazing in our driver's seats.

As 4pm approached we were back on the road. We planned to return to Yaqui Meadows to pleasantly disperse camp, but in a different part of that zone than we had explored previously. Thus, we drove out onto a new area and found a quite nice place with some fine ocotillo to set up camp within a wash. After settling in a bit, we grabbed our gear and set out on exploration of a couple of miles of interesting up-and-down rambling that showed the area we had worked was likely the best in the zone, and instead we ought to go somewhere else in the morning.

Dawn skies for Wednesday, March 15, 2017 offered lots of high clouds, so I was outside early setting up my tripod for an ocotillo sky silhouette. That resulted in the two modest images above. We had decided to hike up the state park's most popular trail, Borrego Palm Canyon, that starts at the main park campground and climbs up the canyon about a mile and a half. By the time we reached the park entrance, many others apparently had the same plan, and we barely were able to fit into parking spots at the trailhead before access was blocked off. Sluggishly getting our gear together, we eventually began making our way up the heavily used trail where many others were going in both directions.

Plants in the area, both perennials and annuals, were huge, with mountain slopes very green. Those stating that the current bloom was the best in over 20 years were no doubt narrowly thinking of this area that indeed received exceptional precipitation. However, such was a local phenomenon, unlike 2005, which had heavy rains over all our desert regions. Skies continued to be overcast to the east, but as we climbed the canyon, blue skies were moving east. About halfway up the route, the stream that was only underground lower down refreshingly appeared on the surface. We stopped to work a particularly dense patch of chuparosa, blue phacelia, fiddleneck, and popcorn flower, but not long later I noticed I had left my A6000 focus mode in Manual focus instead of Auto spot focus I normally use. By the time we reached the Icon Palm Grove, sunshine had moved in over the area. We took a few token photos and then found a nice shady stream side pool to rest awhile at. On the return hike, I shot the same subject above I had flubbed coming in; however, I would have preferred the earlier diffuse cloud light.

Close to the trailhead, we came upon a group of feeding male desert bighorn sheep that the canyon and its oasis spring are famous for. They were obviously used to seeing lots of humans, so they went about their business while several people fired off telephoto images. A couple of times 2 sheep banged their horns against each other, which made for a wonderfully loud sound that echoed off the canyon walls. I caught one animal above making a lips-peeled-back facial expression of enjoyment while rubbing its rear end against a bush.

NEXT: Page 4 western Riverside County
2017 Trip Chronicles: Contents

David Senesac
email: info@davidsenesac.com

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