Poppies!

On Saturday we visited the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve in California's Antelope Valley. It's part of the high desert nestled in a valley in the Tehachapi Mountains (aka above The Grapevine). And there are lots of California Poppies there. Wow, this paragraph is so repetitive. It's like the park's name tells you everything about it! 🤣

I'm getting backlogged on processing images from our weekend trip (as usually happens) so I'll share a quickie here— a selfie and a short video I shot with my cellphone.



An odd detail I want to note is that we're not actually at the Poppy Reserve in these pictures. We're outside of it! The reserve itself is on the other side of the fence in the pic above.

Why not actually go to the park? Well, a) we tried, but there was a long line of cars waiting to get in. We didn't feel like waiting 15 minutes or more idling in our car, or parking outside the park and walking 15 minutes in. Especially because b) we'd noticed a lovely field of poppies half a mile back from the park entrance off a short dirt road.

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In these pictures you can see a fairly healthy springtime bloom of wild California Poppies, the official state flower of California. With all the dry weather the past 3 months we were worried there wouldn't be much of a bloom of wild poppies. They're blooming nicely now vs. pictures from the park we'd checked online 2-3 weeks ago. Still, the bloom is nothing like the massive super-bloom of 2019. Check out my pics and video at that link for jaw-dropping sights.

Hiking is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!

High Desert Weekend Trip-log #5
Granada Hills, CA - Sat, 26 Mar, 2002. 2pm

We finished up our visit to the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve (previous blog) more quickly than expected. I had thought we'd spend a few hours there, like we did when we visited during 2019's superbloom. Alas, without the superbloom there weren't miles of fields of poppies to walk through. We spotted one good patch of flowers, spent some time there, then felt we were done.

But, hey, no biggie. I'd already planned a second hike for the day, time permitting. There was an interesting waterfalls trail I found on AllTrails.com southwest of the Antelope Valley, in the mountains above Lake Castaic. Alas, that hike fizzled. We drove to the remote location and couldn't find clear signs of the trail. There was a canyon that looked like it might be it.... But the creek in the bottom of the canyon was dry. We decided that even if that was the right place, with a dry stream there likely wouldn't be much water at the falls anyway.

So, what do we do when hiking's not working? We go shopping! 🤣 But seriously, that was our third plan for the day, time permitting. We're still trying to complete our set of the new dishes we've bought, so we figured if there was extra time we'd hit a few of the stores in Los Angeles.

We continued down through the mountains— which was a very scenic drive and worth doing in and of itself— to Santa Clarita. We hit a store there and then another one down in the LA basin, in the San Fernando Valley. Alas, this plan has been a fizzle, too. We didn't find anything we were looking for.

Well, plan four is to head early to our hotel in Palmdale, spend a while lounging around at the pool and hot tub, then have an early dinner and relax for the evening. Now, if that plan fizzles, I'll be disappointed!