Desert Adventure

I have always had an attraction towards deserts. Probably it's just because i've never actually been to one. So at the first chance to go for a trip after my move to San Diego, I decided to to visit a Desert Park.

Now San Diego sits in a pretty nice location as regards two things: climate and topographical features. I cannot stop raving about the weather in San Diego. It's just perfect !! Almost every day of the year is a nice bright sunny day and there is only a handful of days that it rains. And I think the reason for the great wetaher is it's topographical location. San Diego lies on the Pacific coast. To the east and less than an hours drive away is the Laguna Mountain Range. Nestled in these mountains is the picturesque Lake Cuyamaca which is a part of the Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. This is followed almost immediately by the hot and arid Anza-Borrego desert. The Joshua tree national park is another great place close-by, specially for activities like rock-climbing.

So on the memorial day weekend this year, I decided to pay a visit to the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. There was one more incentive for visiting this park. The state park has hundreds of miles of dirt roads ideal for off-roading if you have a 4 wheel drive vehicle. Here is some more information about the most popular dirt trails at the park. The visitors office will provide you with a nice map of the entire park.

If you are driving form San Diego, I would recommend driving through the Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. The drive through the mountainous park is a completely contrasting experience from Anza-Borrego and is not worth missing. Lake Cuyamaca lies at the north end of this park and is a fishermans paradise. There are some breathtaking views as you wind down thorough the mountains towards the Anza Borrego desert.

The best part about these parks is their proximity to San Diego. We left home in the morning, picked up a 4 x 4 Jeep from the airport and were on the road by 8:30 am. As we approached Lake Cuyamaca our visiblity was reduced to a few feet because of the morning fog. Here is a picture of Lake Cuyamaca to get an idea of what i'm talking about.

At the heart of the Anza-Borrego State Park is the small city of Borrego Springs. The city has ample restaurants, several stores, a gas station and even an golf course ! After a visit to the visitors center and a quick lunch we were on way to out firat offroading destination. We followed Fonts Wash to Fonts Point and it was a relatively easy trail. Fonts Point offers excellent views of the Borrego Badlands. We then continued along Short Wash to Vista Del Malpais and returned back via Thimble Trail. This part of the trial was a little rough but a lot of fun at the same time. Here's a pic of the dirt road shot from the jeep.

Working our way through these dirt roads took us a couple of hours and we still had time for another route. We decided to do the Split-mountain trail to the Wind caves. This route offers very impressive views of the desert features. The wind caves are about a mile detour by foot. Here are some pics taken along the route.

So that ended our days adventure at this beautiful Desert State park. There are a couple more interesting routes that I wish to do here. One is to start from Canyon Sin Nombre and cut across the Carrizo Badlands to Split Mountain via the Diablo drop-off. The second, and the route which is considered the grand daddy of them all, is to start off at Pinyon mountain road at 4000 feet and cut across the Vallecito mountains via the Pinyon drop-off to Split Mountain at sea level. As per the talk we had with the rangers at the visitor center, the Pinyon drop-off is the scariest part of the route and is termed by them as "heart attack hill". They told us about a ranger who was given a trip thru here by a fellow ranger, and he, never ever in his 30 years at the Park, had the courage to go back again ! Wants me to go back and check out this route even more :)