Yesterday we — Vera and Konstantin Stankevich, Jim Barnick, and myself — spent the whole day on a grand tour of the Cuyamaca mountain area and the southern Anza-Borrego desert. Our itinerary was a little different than our original plan, but we all had a splendid time.
We started by meeting up at the Descanso Junction restaurant. This little place is one our favorite haunts, but Vera and Konstantin (who are from Lake Forest, in Orange County) had never been there before. They arrived a little before us, and had already ordered before Jim and I could warn them about the enormous size of the servings. Konstantin order eggs with pork chops, and he was very surprised when he saw his plate with two huge chops on it. And Vera got an omlette the size of a small loaf of bread. Amazingly, Vera ate almost of her omlette — she must have been hungry! Konstantin could only eat one pork chop; the other went home with him…
After leaving the restaurant, we headed out of Descanso along Boulder Creek Road, which traverses the west face of Cuyamaca mountain, down around 3000' to 4000' in altitude. I was hoping for both wildflowers and birds; we got almost none of either one. On the flowers it looks like we’re just a week or two early, and I’m sure the birds would follow the flowers. The scenery and views were nice, though.
We zoomed through Julian and down to Banner, where we hooked a right (to the south) on the road past the gold mines to Oriflamme Canyon. On this road the Indian paintbrush were still nice, but the bush poppies we saw last week — while still very pretty — were clearly past their prime, with blossoms all beat up by the wind. Jim spotted two mineshafts that somehow we had never seen before; Vera is standing in front of one at right that extended far out of sight into the mountain. I didn’t want to chance a collapse, so we didn’t try walking inside — though the footprints all over the place make it clear that many others feel no such caution. Just before we got to Oriflamme Canyon itself, we came upon this red-tailed hawk, eyeballing us as if considering whether we’d make a good meal. The drive down the canyon itself was full of beautiful views, but not a single blossom graced the hills within our sight. I could see small lupine plants with buds, and other plants that I could not identify, so it must be that we were just to early.
After leaving Oriflamme, we continued down towards S2. Very close to that paved road, we came across a nice patch of agave, sparsely populating an area of a few acres extent. When Vera and Konstantin learned that yes, this was the same agave that tequila is made from, we got to wondering what kind of crazy person looked at an agave one day and said: “Hey, let’s ferment this thing, then distill it, and we’ll have a great drink!” Assuming, of course, that you think tequila is a great drink. To me it seems to be closely related to lighter fluid and gasoline, but I’m certainly no expert on fine tequila. We didn’t really come to any conclusions, but there did seem to be a consensus on the unlikeliness of the whole notion…
After leaving the agave “grove", we headed south on S2 to Smuggler’s Canyon. Though last week we had found preciously little here in the way of flowers, we did find some birds — and I was hoping a few more flowers would have magically appeared. Well, we saw darned few birds, and the collection at right is nearly ever blossom we saw on our walk. From left to right: a prickly pear, a tiny little barrel-shaped cactus, and I have no idea. But despite the lack of flowers and birds, it was still an interesting walk — especially for Vera and Konstantin, who had never been in the desert before.
Speaking of which… Before we let Vera and Konstantin walk in Smuggler’s Canyon, we warned them about “jumping cholla” — we really did! But both of them managed to get jumped on anyway. Vera suffered only a minor attack (that’s her daintly little sneaker in the picture), but Konstantin was the victim of a full-fledged jumping cholla war, and he had direct hits on one leg and both feet. He took his battle wounds in good humor — just reached into his backpack and pulled out a pair of folding pliers, which he used to pull all the thorns out. It took him several tries to get them all, but he finally emerged thorn-free, albeit minus some of his blood…
The photos below are of Vera, Konstantin, and Jim, walking in various parts of Smuggler’s Canyon. We walked up the wash, and the climbed the south slope and walked most of the way back over the generally flat top. At one point we all made our way down a fairly steep and scrabbly slope that was chock full of several species of cholla (including the wily jumping cholla) — and I was sure that at least one of us was going to have a bunch of holes punched in us. But we all made it down without incident…
After leaving Smuggler’s Canyon, we headed back up S2 and turned left on Oriflamme Canyon road. But a mile or so in, we took the right fork to go up Rogdriguez Canyon road, which I had not been on in a couple of years. This area burned out (I think four years ago), and the good birding we’d previously enjoyed there was destroyed. This road had always been a fairly challenging four-wheeling road, and I wan’t sure that it would even be passable after the rains last year. It turned out to be no worse than it ever was, but…Vera and Konstantin had never been four-wheeling before. This was quite an introduction for them! There’s a stretch of a half mile or so of this road that contains several challenging moments — some tight squeezes (at least for our LandCruiser!), some steep and scrabbly climbs, some big rocks to climb over, and some areas where large wheel traversal is required. But with all three differential locks engaged and in the low gear range, our vehicle made it up all of them without much trouble — and certainly no winch, jack, or shovel required. But Vera and Konstantin, especially at first, were not at all confident the vehicle would survive these challenges <smile>. Vera confided to me later that she was thinking about how could get out when the car got stuck. During the trip on the challenging parts, I was able to sneak in a few glances at Vera — she looked like she was in a state of both disbelief and shock. Konstantin was a little harder to read — but there were some moments, especially when the car was teetering, or when we were pointed steeply uphill, when his eyes got big and round, and he stuck his hands out front and made a noise like “whoa!” After we took a couple of these challenges and survived, both of them started to relax and enjoy it a bit more — and by the time we’d cleared them all, the car was full of delighted laughter. A whole bunch of fun was had by all…
After Rodriguez Canyon, the rest of the day was very tame and relaxed. We had some coffee in Julian, drove through the devastated Cuyamaca Park, and then back to the Descanso Junction restaurant (where Vera and Konstantin had left their car). There we parted company; Jim and I for the short drive home, Vera and Konstantin off for a much longer drive back to Lake Forest.
We had way too much fun!
We will do this again…
