On to California

Ten days after returning from Europe, Michael and I left Boulder for a trip to southern California.  We traveled from San Diego to San Francisco mostly along the beautiful and rugged California coast. We intended to make this trip a more leisurely exploration, more relaxing so to speak, than our very busy visits to Paris and London.  Apparently, neither Michael nor I am wired that way.  We packed a lot into an eight-day trip.

We tried an old-fashioned travel agent to find nice places to stay so we found ourselves in a number of very quirky but very nice hotels.

We landed in San Diego in mid afternoon, Monday October 28.  After a quick drive by the city sights, we headed to La Jolla and our first hotel, the La Jolla Kimpton.   The sixth floor room was very modern in a spare style.  We had a balcony with a view of the ocean.  Unusually, there was a plate glass window between the shower and the bedroom, something I had seen only once before – in Shanghai, China.  A motorized shade could be drawn for shower privacy.

Michael and I made the short walk to the beach and scouted out places for dinner.  Our hotel was in the very northern part of La Jolla in an area that is very much a beach community.  We saw one street of surf shops and restaurants surrounded by streets of condominiums hotels and upscale beach homes.  We walked along the beach and enjoyed the seventy-degree weather.   Boulder had been expecting snow that morning as we left.  In fact, we had good weather for the entire week while Colorado experienced a week of cold and storms.

Michael and I participated in the late afternoon wine hour at the hotel before returning to the beach for a sushi and sashimi dinner.  Later we watched the stars come out over the water.  We had a wonderful, relatively low key first day.

On the Beach at La Jolla

The following morning we drove inland a few hours to the tiny town of Borrego Springs.  The town is entirely surrounded by thousands of acres of Anza-Borrego State Park.  The park is at the southern end of the Sonora Desert a few miles west of the Salton Sea.  

Michael and I hiked to a palm oasis a mile and a half from a trailhead.  The simple hike was complicated by summer flash floods that changed the landscape enough that the trail was hard to follow.  Hiker’s footprints went in many directions; we chose one of the wrong ones.  Fortunately, Michael had a topo map on his iPhone and there was adequate cell coverage.  We were able to get back on the trail after going astray several times.  

Looking for the Trail

Fern Palm Oasis

 We had been told to follow the “red flags” which turned out to be small ribbons tied to trees or bushes.  They were difficult to spot going up the canyon. Coming down they were much more visible.  We made it back to the car much more quickly than we found our way to the oasis.  Maybe partly because of the difficulty finding the trail, maybe because of the spectacular scenery Michael and I both thought it was one of the best hikes we had taken.

We arrived at the Borrego Valley Inn mid afternoon.  Our lodging was a desert resort; two rows of rustic efficiency units surrounding a sandy courtyard.  We even had an enclosed patio in the back.  

Borrego Valley Inn

We had time to drive out to Borrego Springs‘ most bizarre tourist attraction.  A wealthy local philanthropist had commissioned metal sculptures of large land animals:  living, extinct and imaginary, spread out over several miles of scrubland both east and west of the center of town.  We drove along a dusty road.   At intervals, we passed a tapir, a mammoth, an elephant and even a dragon.  There were reputed to be more than one hundred sculptures in the collection.

We ate dinner at a local bar/restaurant that was said to serve the best ribs in the area.  We were surprised to see that the customers were mostly our age or older.  Many looked like elderly refugees from the nineteen-sixties.  We saw biker wear, cowboy wear and outfits that fit no known category.  A woman at the table next to us wore a necklace of flashing LED lights and a bandana.  It was a fascinating group and the ribs were decent.

Later we walked a ways behind the hotel and watched the clearest night sky you might ever see.  Moonrise was after midnight yet the Milky Way and the stars were so bright they cast shadows.  We saw a small red light on the ground near us.  One of the other guests was taking a time exposure with a motorized camera.  I hope the light we briefly made to identify the object didn’t ruin his exposure.