January 4, 2006 at 8:52 am · Filed under Uncategorized
The campground was full this weekend, for the New Year’s Eve gatherings. But now that the crowds of RV’ers have departed, the park has fallen into a quieter state. Every morning I hear dozens of tiny birds chirping birds in the smoke trees and the fan palms. The purple-headed Costa’s Hummingbird whips by too, so quickly that we often don’t see it, but we hear the loud hum, like a giant bumblebee.
The campground is now half full, with retiree snowbirds doing whatever it is they do. We don’t see many of them. After dark a few can be spotted sitting by a campfire with friends, but most of them seem to retreat inside to watch TV on their satellite dishes.
After dark I stood in the desert watching the sky for a while. It was the first clear night we have had since we got here. The Milky Way was splashed overhead and a crescent moon was framed by the big fan palms to our southwest. I could hear a night bird screaming overhead as it patrolled the campground, undoubtedly looking for a rodent to eat.
The town has gone quiet, too. Borrego Springs is basically defined by a central road that heads east-west. At the west, it dead-ends into the State Park headquarters and campground, where we live now. A mile further west and you’d hit the mountains, but there are no roads past the campground. To the east, we have a mile of not much, then a small strip of downtown.
We pass the quiet town on the way to anything else in the park. Gas $2.69, then an RV resort, an Inn, a couple of strip malls (grocery, lawyer, gifts, tacos, post office), a little Mexican market, real estate office, laundry, and the centerpiece of town: “Christmas Circle”.
Christmas Circle is just a rotary with a patch of grass in the middle and a visitor center. To the north there are a few scattered subdivisions, to the east a few miles there is an airport, and to the south there is a slowly rising road called S3 (and later S22) that you can drive for 50 miles without leaving the desert park.
Being here now is like lingering after a big party. The place seems empty, but really, emptiness is its natural state. To someone who wants excitement, there is “nothing to do.” But if you look more closely, there is too much to do. Once I finish some work, we will hopefully have time to do some more exploring today.
January 2, 2006 at 5:12 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Our life in the desert has been full. Yesterday you may have noticed I didn’t blog at all. We decided to take a day off to recuperate. I’m dealing with a small post-cold infection, which is clearing up by itself, and Eleanor is definitely fighting off something, probably my virus. So we slept as late as we could, stayed home and just enjoyed the desert sunshine, with nothing more strenuous than a short bike ride around the camp.
On our quiet day, we were pleased indeed to be visited by blog readers Bill and Beth Kerfoot. They drove two hours from their home near Los Angeles to come show us pictures of their really cool 1954 Airstream Liner, which is undergoing a major restoration. AND they brought us lemon cake and cookies! (Way to go, Bill & Beth. You guys are welcome anytime! )
The Kerfoots spent the afternoon and left just before sunset, not long after I took this photo of the two friendly fan palms that guard our Airstream. We settled in for a quick evening campfire (marshmallows for Emma and Eleanor), dinner, a movie, and hit the sack early.
Today was the day for weather. Heavy rain has reached most of California, so we arrived in the desert just in time. Even here, gusty winds and occasional rain showers have been coming and going all day, but in the desert rain is such an event that it doesn’t seem bothersome. I took down the awning, stowed anything loose, and then went for a bike ride …
… whereupon I met up with Sam and Annette Halderman, another pair of loyal blog readers. These folks were camped just a few rows away from us in their fairly new Airstream Safari 25. Sam told me they had been meaning to catch up with us at Sweetwater Summit but the timing didn’t work. So, they found us here!
As they left, the Halderman’s posed their Safari next to ours!
I love when we meet people because of this blog! Sam and Annette gave me a pile of great info about the Tucson area (where we will be heading in a couple of weeks) and we talked about all things Airstream until I got called away to go attend a bat talk at the Visitor’s Center with E&E. The bat talk was fascinating and the Visitor’s Center has been re-done since our last visit — it is really top-notch now.
By the time we got back, the rainbows had arrived, which I posted below already. The changing desert light and clouds made for some spectacular scenery.
Trying to continue taking it easy, we decided to go off-roading for the afternoon. The Nissan has never been off road and it certainly is capable enough (when not towing an Airstream). The folks at the Visitor’s Center suggested a few routes for us to try, starting with Palo Verde, about ten miles east.
Great fun! The route wasn’t seriously challenging (mostly soft sand), but the scenery and geology were terrific. In the photo above you can see Eleanor unloading Emma at one of our stops, along a wide dry wash called “Short Wash”.
A later stop at Vista Del Malpais yielded some incredible views into the Anza-Borrego badlands. I’ve been to Anza Borrego four times and never seen this part of the park. The effect of standing up on the vista with the wind whipping at perhaps 30 MPH, and the badlands hundreds of feet below is just elating. It’s like a miniature Grand Canyon. I’ve never seen anything like it.
I have learned from today that the desert is at its most dramatic when clouds arrive. Shadows on the mountains, rainbows, gray streaks of cloud dipping down, dust storms on the horizon — all these things enhance the visual experience of the desert in ways one can hardly imagine. And you have to be looking all the time, because no view lasts for more than a few minutes. I shot over 100 photos today and had to restrain myself from shooting dozens more.
After our off-road adventure, we stopped by some of the random spots where people are camping. Anza-Borrego is almost unique in that camping is allowed almost anywhere. Just pull up and set up your tent, or park your RV. Stay as long as you want.
So that’s what RV’ers do. Everywhere, scattered across 50 miles of parkland, you will find RVs in the most unlikely spots, completely isolated, sitting in the desert. There are no services (except that cell phones work near Borrego Springs.) No water, no electricity, no 911. But still hundreds of RVs are to be found, including many Airstreams, such as the unusual double-door Classic Limited we saw (above).
I talked to one of the Airstreamers who does this, and he told me he had been out there for over a month. The last two weeks he had his mother (80-plus years old) along. She has been Airstreaming for 23 years and knows more about boondocking than most of us will ever learn. They conserve water scrupulously, making a 50 gallon tank last for at least two weeks. Solar panels on the roof give him enough power to run a microwave once a day, watch two hours of TV on his satellite dish (there are four channels here but all are from Mexico and hence only in Spanish), and run his coffee maker, lights, water pump, etc. When the water is low, he pays $6 to come into the state park, refill, dump the holding tanks, take a shower, and he’s good again for another couple of weeks. If he needs something, all the services of Borrego Springs are only six miles away.
Cost of living? $6 every two weeks, plus food. All the scenery you can stand, and plenty of jackrabbits (and fellow RV’ers) for company. You could do worse.
I like it here.
January 2, 2006 at 1:31 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We are about to go off-roading for the afternoon, but as we were preparing to leave a bit of rain arrived and yielded a glorious rainbow over the desert. Emma and I grabbed our cameras and ran out. The rain was pelting us but drying almost as quickly. I got a few shots — here’s one.
The wind is gusty (15-25 most of the time but occasionally we get a monster gust that rocks the trailer) and the rain keeps coming and going. The sun is shining at the same time, so it’s a little bizarre. Desert weather.
I’ll report in later about our 4WD experience, our Airstream visitors yesterday and today, and the bat talk we went to this morning.
