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The Anza-Berrego Desert

After a nice time in the San Diego area we moved a bit east to a town near Julian, CA. We stayed at the Stagecoach Inn RV Park and took a few nice hikes in the desert State Park right across the street. There were a number of potential hikes in the area but we came to know them as “routes” and not hiking trails. There are no markings or signs, just geographic anomalies that one can focus on getting to or from.

The namesake of the RV park we enjoyed for a few days.
A jumble of boulders would soon give way to an open desert canyon
This was our first attempt at walking a trail when there is no trail to follow. We followed the geographic lay of the land and left ourselves some “bread crumbs” to make it back to our truck later.
This is what a route or trail looks like in the desert. Simply pick a destination and head to it.
We likened this rock to something right out of the comic strip BC back home in Broome County. We could not tell if it was smiling or not?
During our hike we found what are called pictographs. These were actually painted by natives many years ago but no one knows the exact dates. They all seemed to be on rock that was somewhat protected from the elements such as rain or blowing sand.
These pictographs were a bit less well preserved but there must be a story worth telling here.
These “holes” in many of the rocks were supposedly for grinding the agave roots before baking them in pit ovens. We could not imagine how long it took folks to hollow them out of solid rock.
Some discussion was had regarding what this rock looks like but the final consensus was a sperm whale coming up out of the water. Any thoughts?
As we are very near the San Andreas Fault we were silently hoping these rocks would not fall on us in the event of a tremor.
We had to walk the 1.5 miles uphill to see what was billed as the broken down estate of the late author Marshal South. He made an attempted run from society with his family back from 1930 to 1947. It was a very pretty spot indeed but we could not imagine battling the desert elements, especially in the summer!
This was what was left of what appears to be a cistern to collect rain water for the estate?
This rainbow we caught on “film” tells all how we feel our luck is going lately!

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