On our drive from Arizona to California yesterday, we could see what appeared to be sand on the horizon. As we got closer, we were amazed by the North Algodones Dunes Wilderness Area, also known as the Imperial Dunes. Sand in graceful swales and drifts as far as the eye could see! It was similar to the dunes we saw at White Sands National Monument, only this was your typical sandy sand (🙃). In the middle of all the sand, there was an RV park, restaurant, and off road vehicle rental. If we had known about this in advance, we may have worked it into our schedule, but further investigation showed that they rent a 2-seater RZR buggy for $210 plus insurance plus a $750 deposit, etc., etc. That’s a little out of our price range, so it’s probably best we didn’t plan a stop. It was very cool to drive through, though. We went from cactus-covered desert to rock mountains to emerald green farmland to miles of dunes all within a two-hour drive!

We arrived at Anza-Borrego National Park in hopes of seeing the desert in bloom. In an ordinary year, the blooming of the cacti and wildflowers is supposed to be a beautiful site, but the conditions of last fall and winter have set Southern California up for a “super bloom” this year. You probably heard about this on the news, too. Lake Elsinore, California, just became famous overnight because thousands of tourists descended on the town to see a mountainside of poppies in their super bloom splendor, only there were so many people trampling the flowers, spraining ankles and getting bitten by rattlesnakes that the town had to shut down all access to the mountain. Hopefully we won’t run into hoards like that here at Anza-Borrego! But I’m sure we’ll see some lovely landscapes.

Starting with the view from our campsite. We are about 3/4 mile from the road on a dirt road which runs between some small rock mountains and a dried up lake bed. The old lake bed just happens to be in bloom! This is the view from our dinette:

And a couple of views of our campsite:

We think this will do quite well for a few days! We have rain showers passing through. Rain to the left us us, sunshine to the right … we’re waiting for the next rainbow!