A Great Day for Hiking

Last night when I got out the leveling blocks, I had to remove several other items from the outside storage compartment.  It was packed pretty tight.  Instead of putting everything back in, I left out the box of tire chains and the bag of tools.  After all, this is a desert.  It never rains in the desert, right?

At 3:10am I was awakened by the sound or rain drumming on the roof.  The wind was also still gusting as it had all day, buffeting the RV occasionally, so the rain was being driven against one side of our tin can.  It rained on and off until dawn, when the clouds started to break up.  The temperature was 39 degrees.  Any colder and we could have had snow.

We packed up quickly, including the now-wet toolkit and tire chains, and drove back down the mountain to the Palm Canyon Campground, where we would take the first hike.  It was 50 degrees down here and the sun was starting to shine, so a bit more pleasant than in the mountains.  We made breakfast and then started on a hike up Palm Canyon, 1.5 miles one-way to a native palm grove.  In a desert like this, you usually don’t have naturally occurring palm groves unless there is a good source of water.  And this little section way up the canyon had a reliable source of water.

This state park does not allow drone flights.  Which is fine.  However, for the first hour or so the silence of the canyon was shattered by a helicopter circling around overhead, flying over the ridges and back in no perceivable pattern.  Maybe it was a search and rescue mission, maybe it was training, or something else, but it made more noise than a thousand drones and probably scared all the big horn sheep away.  Deb was hoping to spot a big horn sheep, but came away empty.

About a half mile away, the first glimpse of the palm grove is visible.  Just a small oasis of palm trees in a terrain of rocks and desert vegetation.  And located in the bottom of a very narrow canyon.  Seemed a little out of place, but, there it was.

This is one of the more popular hikes in the park, despite much of the skirts of the trees having been destroyed by fire in 2020.  A naturally occurring palm tree will have all the dead fronds still dropping from it, giving it a thick, bushy appearance, most of the trees in this grove look like the trees you see in manicured landscapes--a tall pole with a tuft of green leaves on the top.  Only these poles were mostly black from the fires.  Because of this, the area under the palms is closed; you have to view it from the trail on the canyon wall.

By contrast, one of the trees that was untouched by the fires still retained its skirt, which is a haven for quite a bit of desert wildlife.

Since our day-use fee included the dump station in the campground, we took a shower with our existing water, then dumped the tanks and refilled with fresh water.  We have to be very opportunistic here, grabbing water when it’s available because availability is not always guaranteed.

Just outside the town of Borrego Springs is a series of over 100 larger-than-life sculptures scattered over 1500 acres of undeveloped desert land.  These whimsical metal figures are usually visible from the road, and many of them can be accessed directly by driving a two-track to their location.  We enjoyed seeing these, even taking pictures of each other trying to mimic them.

We had lunch in the traffic circle in Borrega Springs.  Cool traffic circle that had a park in the middle and parking spaces all around the park.

Then it was out to The Slot, about 15 miles out of town, the last two miles being a washboard dirt road.  Another popular area, but today it was deserted.  We saw two other people.  When we came out, the parking lot was empty.

This slot canyon is rather long and started out to be just a narrow canyon.  I began to wonder why I drove all the way out here, when the canyon closed in and became a delightful slot canyon.  It was narrow enough that I had to remove my backpack at times to fit through.  A very cool hike and the upper-60’s weather was perfect for this.

We drove a couple legs of the so-called triangle tour, a series of three roads that go through the heart of the park.  We stopped at Yaqui Pass Camp to make dinner and hike the William Kenyon Overlook trail.  This camp is nothing more than a gravel lot a couple acres in size.  There is nothing else.  We’re staying here for the night.  It’s quiet, it’s not visible from the road, it’s level, we’re the only ones here, and the price is right.  Tomorrow we’ll browse around this area and then probably head south.

No big horn sheep today, but we did see a tarantula on one of the trails.