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We Fell in Love With the Borrego Desert

It was as though we were destined to experience the desert,  to discover some of it's secrets, share in it's existence and fall in love with it.  Both of us were smitten the first time we went there, not knowing what to expect before we got there and having preconceived ideas of what a desert would be like.  Boy were we wrong!  The only thing we were right on about was the fact that it is hot there.

The Anza Borrego Desert is a wondrous landscape of beauty, flowering trees and plants, silence, wildlife, solitude, distance, mountains, sand, rocks, hidden surprises and danger.

This is a Hedgehog Cacti blooming in the Spring.

Borrego Desert, Did You Know?

1. Contrary to popular belief, the desert is not just a barren landscape of sand dunes and rattle snakes.  This particular desert is a full landscape of mountains, canyons, oasis's, trees, flowers, cactus, creatures and even water.

2. The silence is so thick and profound in the desert that it almost seems to be a fortress surrounding you.  Then a sound will come that pierces the fragile wall just for a while.

3. The Anza Borrego Desert  is the largest state park in California containing 620,000 acres, running about 25 miles east-to-west and 50 miles north-to-south.  It is the nation's largest desert state park and one of the largest parks in North America.

4. The park is named after Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza and the Spanish name Borrego, or bighorn sheep.

5.  The average annual  rainfall is 6.9 inches in Borrego.  To compare, the average annual rainfall in Death Valley is 1.84 inches and the average rainfall in Florida is 49.91.

6.  The park is in the Colorado Desert, this is a branch of the much larger, Sonoran Desert.

7.  The dominant plant of the Mohave and Colorado Deserts is the Creosote Bush.  Creosote Bush Scrub covers more land than any other community in California - over 21million acres.  The Creosote bush is the oldest living thing in the world.  Some Creosote plants in the desert have been dated at 18,000 years of age.

8.  People come from around the world to see the Anza Borrego Desert bloom in Spring.

Bee Stories

The Honey Comb   by Betty

Our trips to the desert consist mostly of wilderness camping, hiking, sleeping in a tent and driving around trying to find something or someplace we have never seen.  Fortunately we go there enough for this to happen to us on a regular basis. 

On this particular journey in 1989 we were driving along Pinyon Wash, looking for flowers, desert creatures and the usual.   Harris was driving and off in the distance on an eastern cliff I noticed an unusual symmetric design that did not fit into it's environment.  It looked unnatural, it was long vertical stripes of bright white and black.  We drove closer to get a better look and realized by the humming sound that we had discovered a  large honey comb, alive with bees.   It appeared to be about 4 feet wide and  about 3 feet tall.  It hung deep into the cave where it was attached.

We were amazed by it's beauty and also by the amount of honey settling in the bottom of the long comb sections.  Bees were everywhere as Harris climbed the cliff to get a better look.  We are always careful not to damage the desert environment and we were in this case.

For a number of years after that we would visit the honeycomb.  Our second visit revealed significant damage to it and with each visit the comb was disappearing more and more by what looked like a wild animal eating the honey.  At least we are hoping it was a wild animal and not a human.  Today there is not any evidence that the comb was ever there.

The Swarm  by Betty

The desert is a hum with bees.  They seem to be everywhere and when we are sitting at our wilderness camp site the relaxing hum of bees fills the silent air. 

One day we were hiking along a wash, Harris and his Mom took a short hike off the wash to check out the blooming wild flowers.  I stayed on the wash to continue exploring there. 

As I was walking in the quiet I heard what sounded like a large truck coming up the wash behind us.  I couldn't believe that someone would attempt to drive the wash and possibly damage the landscape.  As it came near and became louder I turned around and saw coming right at me a huge swarm of bees.  The swarm was about 8 feet off the ground, seemed to be about 10 feet wide, several feet deep and about 4-5 feet high.  It was huge, loud and fast.  I screamed, ran to the nearest bush, crouched down low and watched as the black, moving mass passed right over me and off to their destination.

I was amazed at this wondrous site and thought how lucky I was to have witnessed it.

That Spectacular Wild Flower Bloom

by Harris

It's obvious to anyone who visits our home that I have a passion for desert plants, especially cactus.  Over the years our garden has contained about 85 species from different places in North, Central and South America. 

One of the highlights of our desert experience is the annual spring bloom.  Each year in April showy colorful flowers appear on the thorny succulents.  As beautiful as this is though, there is another show there that far surpasses anything I have ever seen,  the wildflower bloom!   This spectacular bloom takes place just before the cactus bloom, beginning in late February and early March.

For a really good wildflower bloom to occur the right blend of temperature and rainfall must come together in perfect harmony.  Not enough rain and the seeds will not germinate.  Too much rain and flash floods will wash seed any alluvial top soils away.  Seeds can lay dormant in the earth for years, awaiting the perfect growing season to spring forth.

We were fortunate to experience such a season in the Spring of 1992.  It was called by some, a 50 year bloom.  It is a sight I will never forget.  The ground in certain areas was carpeted with wild flowers of various hues.   The tapestry of flora as far as the eye could see included Primrose, Verbena, Desert Sunflower and Desert Lily just to name a few.  One such field stretched nearly 5 miles to the base of the Santa Rosa Mountains. 

I've been to the Tulip Festival in Holland and the Flower Fields in Carlsbad but never have I seen so many acres in bloom at one time.  Truly one of the wonders of nature.

When will such a year happen again, no one knows.  Most years have some bloom, some better than others.  To find out more about the Anza Borrego Desert wildflower bloom go to Desert USA, Anza Borrego Desert. 

Blooming Barrel Cacti surrounded by a tapestry of purple and green.