After a beautiful drive down to Borrego Springs, through The Borrego Badlands we arrived at a gorgeous RV park situated on a very nice golf course, with stunning views!! Turns out this is another Dark Sky Preserve area which was fantastic as there was a super blood moon lunar eclipse event while we were there. John and Suzanne ( new friends that we made in Chula Vista ) were also here so it was great to connect with them!!
They joined us for the eclipse, but unfortunately, it was cloudy, but we did get to view totality, which was awesome! John and Larry enjoyed drinking some scotch to keep them warm!
Our first night in Borrego Springs we had very strong winds which rocked us as we tried to get some sleep. The next day we had planned on exploring on our bicycles but with winds still very strong at 30 km/h gusting to 50 that was not a good idea! So our cycle just took us about 8 km to the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Visitor Center, where we watched 2 videos, one on the seasons of the desert area around us and one on the formation of the region.
We learned that the Sea of Cortez used to come up this far but as the Colorado River carved out the majestic Grand Canyon it washed that part of Arizona into California and closed up the valley leaving just a good size lake ( The Salton Sea ) but no sea, fascinating. On our way home we stopped to do some grocery shopping as we were just too busy in Vegas to worry about food for home cooking. When we had checked Google for grocery stores here it said there were 2 stores within 2 km of the RV park, perfect! Well, they were more like a glorified corner store, but we got what we could, ( we were not going to starve ) and we learned a powerful lesson to always be prepared!
We were quite happy being so close to the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park as we could cycle to trailheads and then go for a hike. The Palm Oasis trail went 2.5 km up the canyon that ran up into the mountain, it was a definitely an oasis in the dessert! This was something that we had never seen before and it was gorgeous!! The park is also home to almost 2/3 of the Peninsular Big Horned Sheep, which is on the endangered species list, we did not actually see any here, but a couple weeks ago we saw some across the valley in Joshua Tree National Park.
Another day we cycled over to a different trailhead and went for a similar hike called Hellhole Canyon trail up to Hellhole Palms and then Maidenhair Falls. It was a great hike up a canyon in the mountains to a great spot on these huge rocks to enjoy the sunshine and a snack. A great day!
Along with the 2 great hikes, we did 2 great cycles as well! We cycled out of town through the high desert and over some of the most active fault lines in this part of the world.
Over 1000 earthquakes a year are recorded here! However, almost all of them you can’t detect without electronic equipment, so we never felt anything. It was stunning scenery!!!
On the way back we even had a bit of an airshow as there was a big Hercules aircraft practicing taking off and dropping paratroopers all day long. Our 2nd ride we cycled out of town about 20 km and then turned around, and on the way back June set our new cycling land speed record of 64.4 km/h heading into one of the washes! So fun going so fast!!
We did not really have a destination, but we did have a goal to see these life size metal sculptures of horses, dinosaurs, sabre tooth tigers and a massive serpent that are scattered throughout the desert. Very cool!!!
In conversation with other travelers that we have met, everyone had said we MUST go to the town of Julian, which is famous for their apple pie. It is situated close to here on the mountain pass heading back over towards the San Diego side of the mountains. So we made plans with John and Suzanne and Rio, their dog, to go.
The weather at the resort was very pleasant but the weather when we got there was windy and cold! With 100 year old apple orchards and a variety of crab apple that is very high in sugar, the results are amazing pies! We can testify to this as we tried three different pie companies in our “taste test”. Our favourite being Mom’s Pie Company.
Another excellent use for apples is, of course, cider! which we tried at 2 different cideries, quite tasty! The next day we had to say good-bye to our friends, but we know we will see them again on the road!
Since this resort has a nice 9 hole golf course, and we don’t get to golf very often we went golfing on our last day.
We took advantage of the twilight rate and managed to get our 18 holes in, what a beautiful course! It was a nice way to wrap up a great week.
While golfing we decided to come back next spring, so we stopped at the office on our way back and booked site 924, which is along one of the fairways for 2 weeks! See you next year Borrego Springs.
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