Anza Borrego State Park, CA

We’ve just finished 6 days in Joshua Tree National Park, 3 in the Mojave Dessert section in Jumbo Rocks Campground and 3 in the Colorado Desert section in Cottonwoods campground.   Today we drove south west to Anzo-Borrego State Park, California’s largest park.   

Joshua Tree exceeded expectations – two very nice camp sites with great walks, rides and ranger programs.  Our first day was cold with strong winds and we were thinking we may only stay the one night.   But we did a ranger program in the afternoon visiting the remains of the Ryan Ranch.   We also did a good hike to the nearby Skull Rock.   By the time we went to bed we had decided to stay for a while.  Just to the north west of our campsite is a large Joshua Tree forest with large and complex trees as well as a mix of smaller trees.  Really interesting.  The weather has been wonderful, cool at night (often 8-10 degrees C when we wake up) but warms quickly as the sun rises – often reaching 20 by 9 o’clock.   We’ve had lots to do since there are plenty of ranger programs and hikes.   The Mojave section of the park is all above 3,000 feet and our campsite was at 4,500.   On one of our outings we rode up to Keys lookout and could see the Coachella Valley from Palm Springs in the north to the Salton Sea in the south.   Visibility was excellent (really surprising since one of the exhibit panels at the viewpoint explained why you couldn’t see the mountains on the other side of the valley very distinctly).  

Cottonwoods campground is in the Colorado Desert section (south  easterly section) and is lower (2,000 and less) with very different plants.  It is also hotter and drier and the hikes took more out of us but were still great.  

Today we drove through the Coachella Valley which is watered by an irrigation ditch from the Colorado River and is covered by farm fields: lemon and orange groves, vines, date palms etc etc.  Very green fields alternating with desert.   We passed the Salton sea (which is almost as low as Death Valley (I think about 50 feet higher). 

We just set up here in the Anzo Borrego State Park in their serviced campground for one night and plan to move tomorrow to the primitive dry camping area once we had our showers and (hopefully) got the wifi working. We took a little ride into the visitors center (which is underground and well designed) and the little town of Borrego Springs for some Mexican food and grocery shopping.  I’m sure we’ll make another visit before leaving.