Wildflowers at Carrizo Plain

Wildflower Travelog #8
Carrizo Plain National Monument, CA · Fri, 13 Mar 2026. 1:30pm.

Carrizo Plain National Monument is a remote park in California. It's tucked between hither and yon, between a couple of mountain ranges that have few roads crossing them. Hither and yon, in this case, are the Central Valley and the Central Coast. When fellow Californians furrow their brows and ask, "Okay, but where is that?" one answer I give is it's 50 miles west from Bakersfield— as that how we got here this morning.

We've been to this park a few times before and explored various parts of it. Today our aim was much more focused: see wildflowers. We stopped at the visitors center to get guidance on where the best blooms are right now, then headed off to one of those areas, atop the Caliente Ridge. Among the reasons we chose to go there first were the possibility of spotting the rare desert candle flower.



As we drove up the ridge on a dry, dirt 4x4 trail we passed through a few fields of blooming wildflowers right alongside the road. The patches of blooms were pretty, though they were nothing like the overwhelming superbloom when we visited here in 2019. We stopped a few times for photos, including in an area just over the top of the ridge. Flowers here (photo above) carpeted the canyon below us.

And that rare desert candle flower?



We hadn't seen it at any of our previous stops. A fellow park-goer even asked us if we'd seen any, as she was on the hunt for it. But right here it was, growing in abundance. And they were in a field with a beautiful mix of other wildflowers, yellow daisies, orange California poppies, and whatever that pretty purple one is. 😅



Hawk often dislikes being in pictures and doesn't always want to participate in an "ussie"— a selfie, but with both of us in it, like in the first picture here. So as a backup plan we made photos with one of her photo stand-ins, "Winter" the red-tail hawk puppet, among the wildflowers.

Tapped Out from the Carrizo Plain

Wildflower Travelog #9
Santa Maria, CA · Fri, 13 Mar 2026. 4:30pm.

I'll cut straight to it: We tapped out today. After a fun 4x4 drive up into the mountains above Carrizo Plain where we saw lots of wildflowers, we headed to the southern end of the park. Our intent was to explore more wildflower blooms in areas only reachable with 4x4. But the park road itself is primitive, with miles of gravel or hard-pack dirt surface instead of broken pavement. By the time we got to the southern end and were ready to do some real offroading, we were spent. The park road bounced us around too much, we'd already seen a bunch of wildflowers, and I was starting to question how many hours of energy I'd have left. Sure, we could stay over another night, but all things considered I preferred being able to get home tonight.

Thus from the southern end of the park we tapped out and decided to head home. Ironically the fastest way to get home would've been to drive back through the park. But, ugh, we didn't have the energy for that. So we took the long way around from the south, heading west on Hwy. 166. At least it was a little pocket of California we'd never seen before, the Cuyama Valley. Road trip!

Once out at Hwy. 101 on the Central Coast we took a slight detour south to get an early dinner in Santa Maria. That's where we are now. But no, we're not at some little hole-in-the-wall shop famous for its eponymous Santa Maria tri-tip. We're at Golden Corral. 🤣

No, Golden Corral is not gourmet dining. We're not gourmands, anyway. Golden Corral is dirty pleasure of ours. But it does have its pluses. As a buffet restaurant it's a) instant gratification and b) almost certain to have a few good choices each of us likes among its dozens of choices. Oh, and c) unlike fast food alternatives both of us could actually get servings of real, tasty vegetables on our plates. Plus, it's been almost a year since we last ate at a Golden Corral.

The good news is, from here, it's a straight shot home, 3.5 hours up US 101. With a stop for gas on the way we'll be home a bit after 8pm. And I won't be worried about driving while tired and whether we should stop for the night instead of getting home to our own bed.