Thursday Adventure Wrap-Up. Bakersfield.
Mar. 15th, 2026 09:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerWildflower Travelog #5
Bakersfield, CA · Thu, 12 Mar 2026. 6pm.
It's 6pm and we're settled in for the evening at our hotel in Bakersfield, California. Yes, it's a move from where we stayed last night. Yes, it's not that far away if you look at the map below. Yes, we could have just stayed at the other hotel two nights and kept things marginally simpler. Yes, I hate Bakersfield because it's a shit-hole. But I wanted to try this hotel tonight because they have a hot tub. Except when we got down to the hot tub about 30 minutes ago, we found it was out of service.
I hate Bakersfield. It's a shit-hole.
Ah, but what did we do today? It was a flowers road trip!
We started the morning up in the Grapevine at 4,000'. We then made three stops/scenic drives for wildflowers, particularly the California poppy, which is at the height of its seasonal bloom right now. One was a bloom we spotted from the road west of the Poppy Reserve, the second was at the Antelope Valley Antelope California Poppy Reserve State Park, and the third was a very scenic dirt-road drive east of the park.
It's ironic that, of these three areas, the state park devoted to poppies was the least bloom-y. But that's part of the nature of wildflowers: it's unpredictable from season to season exactly how well they'll bloom in a specific area at a specific time. When we visited a few years ago we also found that an area just outside the park had superior blooms (2022). Though when we visited during the 2019 superbloom the best views were in the park.
After visiting three wildflower spots today we were wildflower-ed out. The next stop we made was an attempt at rock-hounding for Hawk. Alas the spot her online guides took us to is marked as private property with "No Trespassing" signs. We're not the sort of people to ignore such signs— we respect private property—so we called it a day. We then drove the scenic, back-roads route to Tehachapi for an early dinner.
After dinner we drove down the mountain to Bakersfield, which is where we are now.
Bakersfield, CA · Thu, 12 Mar 2026. 6pm.
It's 6pm and we're settled in for the evening at our hotel in Bakersfield, California. Yes, it's a move from where we stayed last night. Yes, it's not that far away if you look at the map below. Yes, we could have just stayed at the other hotel two nights and kept things marginally simpler. Yes, I hate Bakersfield because it's a shit-hole. But I wanted to try this hotel tonight because they have a hot tub. Except when we got down to the hot tub about 30 minutes ago, we found it was out of service.
I hate Bakersfield. It's a shit-hole.
Ah, but what did we do today? It was a flowers road trip!
We started the morning up in the Grapevine at 4,000'. We then made three stops/scenic drives for wildflowers, particularly the California poppy, which is at the height of its seasonal bloom right now. One was a bloom we spotted from the road west of the Poppy Reserve, the second was at the Antelope Valley Antelope California Poppy Reserve State Park, and the third was a very scenic dirt-road drive east of the park.
It's ironic that, of these three areas, the state park devoted to poppies was the least bloom-y. But that's part of the nature of wildflowers: it's unpredictable from season to season exactly how well they'll bloom in a specific area at a specific time. When we visited a few years ago we also found that an area just outside the park had superior blooms (2022). Though when we visited during the 2019 superbloom the best views were in the park.
After visiting three wildflower spots today we were wildflower-ed out. The next stop we made was an attempt at rock-hounding for Hawk. Alas the spot her online guides took us to is marked as private property with "No Trespassing" signs. We're not the sort of people to ignore such signs— we respect private property—so we called it a day. We then drove the scenic, back-roads route to Tehachapi for an early dinner.
After dinner we drove down the mountain to Bakersfield, which is where we are now.
