The Hoppy Okapi

After our tour of Galleta Meadows and lunch at Carlee’s (home of yummy burgers and yummier homemade potato chips), we headed out to Anza Borrego state park to claim our campsite and do a bit of hiking. We headed out on Palm Canyon trail, the most popular one in the park, and the same one that we started on on our backpaking trip last fall. Anza Borrego during the wildflower bloom is a lot different than Anza Borrego during late fall – more water, more green plants, and way more people. The flowers themselves were pretty impressive once we got about half a mile down the trail – almost every leafy plant in site was blooming, and the buds were just starting to come out on the cacti. We were sad to see a troop of boy scouts playing strange gladiator games and running amok over the delicate desert landscape (I thought the point of camping during scouting was to learn to like and respect nature, not destroy it, but apparently times have changed), but otherwise had a good time exploring the canyon and taking pictures of the flowers. We hiked a little beyond the oasis to a small waterfall, and then took the trail less-traveled on the way back to camp, hiking along the western edge of the canyon. Even though the main trail was pretty crowded, there was no one else on the longer trail back to camp, and we almost lost faith a few times when it took counter-intuitive twists, but ultimately stuck with it and enjoyed the alternate view.