Spring in Borrego Springs

Borrego Springs is a lovely desert community that is even better when the flowers bloom. My blog readers will know that at least once a spring we like to take the drive over the mountains to the desert. This year I got a photo of a silver puff. There were few desert primroses today. I don't know if that means we misssed them, they will bloom later, or that this year is not a good one for them. Lots of rain did turn the desert floor yellow with flowers and they may have prevented other flowers from blooming.

The camel is the real deal. There is a camel ranch in Ramona and a few of the camels were near the road. So we stopped to take a few photos. You can see our day was foggy and overcast. It even rained on us the way over to the desert.

The sun shinning on Salton Sea. Salton Sea. It is an interesting place to see but it really smells bad when the fish die off. The sea is 30 miles from Borrego Springs. This was taken from Montazuma Road on the way down into the valley.

When ER first came down from Washington State he wanted to see Salton Sea. Guess there had been lots of TV adds promoting the Salton Rivera resort there. I didn't think much of the place. Been there before and thought it was a big smelly place. URF! Anyway on one of our first dates we drove over there. Rented a small motor boat and floated around for a little while. ER saw the resort and the empty dusty streets of the subdivision...only a few miserable looking houses were built on the sandy dessert, and he could understand why I was not impressed by the place. Back then there was a gift shop there and I got a silver charm of an out board motor for my charm bracelet. Still have it.

 Looking back from the valley floor to the edges of the clouds we left behind.

The silver puff. I had been looking through my Sonoran Desert flower book and had seen a photo of this flower just the day before. So really nice to actually see the flower and take my own photo. Yea!

Since I had seen the real thing on the way over, took this though I have photographed this sculpture before.

It is great to see even more of these metal animals. Borrego Springs is turning into a Museum of metal art!

Hailey taking a photo of the ORV sculpture.

Along Montazuma Road on our way back home. There were more of these yellow flowers here than I've ever seen before.

Ocotillo close up.

On the way home we stopped in Santa Ysabel and had the lovely breakfast buffet. Hailey just sat and read while we ate the great food. Then we bought her Jack in the Box in Ramona on the way home. Teenagers!

Super Moon

It was cloudy, but there were breaks in the heavy clouds and the slight overcast that still covered the moon was thin and the moon did shine through. The first of the photos shows the moon rising through my olive tree. Then for a few moments the moon shown clear of the heavy clouds and I got the whole moon in my camera lens.  It was not totally clear and that does show in the whole moon photo.

 

Here is the photo from last night to see the difference. The orange color in this photo is because of my jpg camera settings. The above photos were taken in raw.

Moon Rise

Tomorrow the moon is going to be closer to the earth than it has been in about 19 years. It will look 14 % larger than usual. It will be a great photo op. Here though they say it will be raining tomorrow night and if not rain at the least cloudy. I will be out with my camera if I can but just in case I took some photos of the moon tonight.

I started as the moon rose behind a neighboring eucalyptus tree. My camera is the Olympus E3 and the lens is my 500mm bigma. I used a tripod.

Julian California with Snow!

Julian is a lovely old town in the Cuyamaca Mountains east of San Diego. Julian began as a gold mining town and became a farming community. Julian is famous for apples. Snow in Julian doesn't happen every winter. We had cold rain storms with snow in the mountains two week ends in a row. People flock to the mountains when it snows and both weekends saw hoards of people and their children running around in the snow as seen on the TV news. Today the skys cleared and the people went back to work and the children back to school. We drove up to see the snow. The first photos are at a lookout east of Julian with a view toward the desert.

We decided to drive back through Julian as we had not stopped on our way through...I wanted to take photos there.

Then I saw this pretty little school on the way back towards Santa Ysabel

The Julian Pie Company has a store at Santa Ysabel so we stopped to buy an apple pie. It was still warm from the oven and smelled like cinamon and apples. The Julian Pie Company makes wonderful yummy pies with light flaky crusts. Their apple pie is the total best!

We took a small detour to see the Mission.

 

We decided to drive home through Wild Cat Canyon. We took another detour up to the Country Estates and got a good view of the snowy mountain.

After we got back home from our little day trip we enjoyed a hot cup of coffee and  fresh apple pie.

Visitor

Morning Sky

After the rain...My mini view toward the east

The weather should be clear until Friday. There is lots of snow in the mountains but not worth taking the drive up there. Today is a holiday and there will be tons of people tramping over everything. Then lots of traffic up and back.

The first time we ever went to the snow, I was about five years old. No freeways back then and the drive back was slow and miserable. I do remember seeing the snow and finding out it was cold. We were bundled up but no one in southern California would have the best clothing for the snow. My hands were very cold and we didn't stay very long. I didn't see snow again until the winter we spent up in Washington. That was when I really found out how cold snow really is. We had to walk about half a mile to the bus stop. Most of the girls had mittons but not us. Our coats were not heavy as we brought them from California...no raincoats which would have kept the wind from blowing through our clothing and I remember just being miserable.

When we were back in California I remember that our high school would thin out the day after snow in the mountains.

Anyway if I do get up to see the snow will post some photos here.

Red Sky

Rain

Rain makes everything green. My yard looks like a park from the rain we had a few weeks ago and then the sunny days we have had last month and up to day before yesterday. Without some more rain the green would turn to brown dirt and dust. So I am always happy to see it rain here. I don't know how long this will last...but have heard a few complaints all ready!

Spring is always my favorite time. I think that is true for most people no matter where they live. Here there is such a big difference between spring and summer. In summer everything turns brown. Google Earth updated the photos of this area last August and it was a surprise to me at how brown everything looked though I do live here. Seeing it from space shows the dry we really live in. People might wonder why we don't get out the garden hoses and sprinklers. Water is expensive. If we use too much we must pay a penality for the extra used over our limit. So let it rain!

Lovely Day

Spent some time kicking back at Summer's Past with glass of iced tea and Jackie. We both enjoyed the tea and conversation. Then we visited the gift shop. I bought some spring flower seeds and am looking forward to putting in a garden. I only hope I don't loose it to my husband's weed eater...that has happened! I said as much to the clerk and she told me that her husband thought her sweet peas were weeds and pulled them all up. We have to plant sweet peas before Christmas if we want flowers for spring. They like cooler weather than we have in summer. So it is now too late for her to replant.

Jackie went to the soap shop while I wandered around a bit and took some photos. Hopefully am not taking the same photos over. There is lots of photo ops there.