2010 Desert Parks Wildflower Tour

[Ed in Montana]

It's T-minus 60 hours and counting until the late Friday afternoon launch of Desert Parks Tour #6, a three thousand mile journey to catch the spring wildflower blooms of the Sonoran and Mojave deserts.

All mechanical systems are go and final loading of the Sportsmobile will begin shortly on Friday morning. Psychologically though, the crew is almost braindead from the last four months of this miserable winter. Changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes are in order. Now if the Sporty would just drive itself down I-15.

With the new Dell notebook 'puter up and running, I'm going to try posting some trip reports from the road, where ever there is a wireless hotspot or Verizon access.. But I'm pretty sure the Racetrack in Death Valley National Park doesn't have net access, thank god.

First camping spot will be Valley of Fire State Park east of Vegas, followed by Joshua Tree National Park, four days in Anza Borrego Desert State Park, Mojave National Preserve and finally several days in Death Valley National Park. Last year at his time, Anza Borrego had received 3.5 inches of rain, and had a good bloom of wildflowers to my untrained eye. This year, Anza has received nearly 8 inches of moisture and is having a very, very good bloom according to the botanists on the ground there. It should be an amazing trip!

Previous posts on this subject include the Extreme Air compresser install thread:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4193&start=0

The pre-launch thread:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4395

The 2009 Desert Parks Tour thread:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2777&start=0


It’s time to stop and smell the flowers.

 

[Ed in Montana]

0600 HOURS MST FRIDAY MARCH 12, 2010

Launch time has been moved up to noon today, in hope of missing heavy weather moving into the trip trajectory southwest over Monida Pass on the Continental Divide on Saturday. It appears that a major late winter storm is moving into southwest Utah late Saturday and Sunday making our dash to the desert along the I-15 corridor this weekend extremely difficult.

The good news is that the storm should be over quickly, with highs in southwest Utah predicted to reach the 50s on Monday. Stay tuned for more trip updates from the road, from the new Verizon air card and Dell notebook!

 

[Ed in Montana]

2000 HOURS MST FRIDAY MARCH 12 Idaho Falls, ID

Made the 250 mile run down I-15 in five hours to Idaho Falls. No snow or weather yet, but very cloudy and gloomy. The real fun starts tomorrow, with the 500 mile run down to St. George, UT and off the high levels of the eastern Great Basin/western Colorado Plateau. All of I-15 south of Salt Lake is under a Winter Storm watch for thundershowers, sleet freezing rain and heavy wet snow starting sometime after noon on Saturday.

We will see how far south we can get before we either hole up or out run the storm. Isn't traveling in March in the Intermountain West fun?

 

[bettyford-SMB]

Be safe! I look forward to the pictures.

Ron

:h4:

 

[captainkettel-SMB]

Ed, I am heading down to Anza Borrego SP myself. I am leaving in the next couple of days. I went for the Spring bloom last year for the first time. It was REALLY cool. Weather was nice and flowers OMG. Maybe I'll run into you again. Last time we met was in Death Valley a few years back. You might want to check out this site for spring bloom updates:

http://www.desertusa.com/wildflo/wildupdates.html

 

[Ed in Montana]

1600 HOURS MST SATURDAY March 13, 2010 BEAVER, UTAH
Got up and on the road southbound at I-15 at 0600 HOURS after a banana and a sausage biscuit from Micky D’s. the road was dark and dry, and after sunup pretty cloudy and gloomy. At Mallad Summit south of Pocatello, we hit the first snowstorm. Not bad, but just getting to the point of icing the road surface, before we drive out of it at Tremonton, Utah.

I-15 through the Salt Lake Metroplex had the least amount of traffic we have seen in years, but this is at 1000 on a gloomy rainy Saturday morning.

After a quick lunch in Nephi, Utah, we head south into the first of the heavy rainstorms. The speed limit here in the open desert is 80mph but you have to be crazy to go that fast with this amount of water on the road. South of Scipio, the rain clouds lift and we can see 30-40 miles south across the big bowl of this portion of the Great Basin around Fillmore, Utah. Stopping at Fillmore for more diesel (pricey for Montana at $3.19/gallon) we can see big storm cells moving north toward us. Maybe its just a few more rainstorms I think.

Ten miles south of Fillmore, we find out it’s not.

A huge wall cloud of the approaching snowstorm hits the Sporty with a vicious crosswind from the southwest. Pretty soon there is pea size hail pelting the vehicle, with bolts of lightning off to the east of the interstate. A timid (or wise) trucker has stopped under an overpass, and positioned his windshield out of the direct force of the hail. A couple of RVs have pulled off on the shoulder, and a 5 by 3 foot interstate road sign is twisted into pretzel by the side of the road from the winds in the storm front. We have motel reservations in Cedar City tonight, but we will be lucky to get to the next tiny town, Beaver Utah in this storm.

The interstate goes up and over several high spurs coming westward over the Utah mountains into the Great Basin desert at this point, and the snow gets worse by the mile. Forward visibility is reduced to 50 and then 25 yards and the road is covered with several inches of icy slush. More worrisome is that the windshield wipers on the Sporty continue to ice up, forcing us to stop twice to clean the ice off of the frozen blades, even with the defrost going full blast. At one point the entire windshield is iced-over, except for the small swath cleared by the ice encrusted wipers.

After many miles creeping along at 40mph in heavy traffic in heavy wet snow, we have had enough and can barely see the exit at Beaver Utah. We get a motel room at 1430 HOURS and collapse for a while. Notice the frozen headlights on the Sporty:

Checking the Internet in the motel room, a 150 mile stretch of I-15 has whiteout conditions. 70 miles south of Beaver, there’s dry pavement. Oh well, the dry desert will have to wait until tomorrow.

 

[Ed in Montana]

Hello Captainkettle! Yes I remember meeting at Mesquite Springs in Death Valley several years ago. We had four Sportmobiles in the campground that night.

We will be Anza Borrego Desert State Park starting Tuesday night, March 16th through Saturday morning, March 20th, camping mostly in the backcountry. Half of Borrego Palm Campground is closed this year due to budget cuts, so I don't know if we will be visiting there.

Last year, Anza had a little over three inches of rain. This winter, Borrego Springs has received nearly eight inches of precipitation. It should be an amazing wildflower bloom. Hope to run into you there.

 

[Ed in Montana]

0830 HOURS SUNDAY MARCH 14 BEAVER UTAH

We arrived at 1530 hours yesterday afternoon in a blinding white out that lasted until near 1800 hours. Shortly after we found a motel room, a wrecker came by with a Ford Expedition sized SUV on its flatbed, that looked like it had slid under a tractor trailer, with the engine hood peeled back over the windsheild. Not good. The occupants seemed okay though.

The white out lifted for an hour and half in early evening and some travel on the Interstate resumed, but it began to snow and blow afterwards with blizzard conditions.

Here's Sporty at 0800 this morning:

Got to dig out the snow scraper to dig out the van. There's traffic on the Interstate going south (including a snowplow) and we are going to try to make Saint George and dry pavement. It's down to the desert.

 

[bettyford-SMB]

Snow in the morning and warm sunshine in the the evening. You are a lucky man. Congrats on finding a room yesterday that was probably a stroke of luck as well.

What an Adventure!
Glad your safe
Thanks for bringing me along. :a4:


Ron :h4:

 

[Ed in Montana]

1300 MONDAY MARCH 15, 2010 LAKE MEAD NRA VISITOR CENTER, BOULDER CITY NV

Escaped the snow and slush on I-15 on Sunday morning to the cool and breezy desert at Valley of Fire State Park east of Las Vegas. Beautiful quiet campground at Arch Rock.

Good sunset/sunrise pics, but no time to upload. More later.

It's further down to Joshua Tree NP for tonight, and hopefully hotter weather.

 

[Ed in Montana]

1700 HOURS PDT March 17, 2010 ANZA BORREGO DESERT SGTATE PARK, CALIFORNIA

After nearly freezing to death in the March blizzard in central Utah on I-15, we finally pulled into Valley of Fire State Park east of Last Vegas mid afternoon on Sunday. It wa swarm but not really hot, but the red rocks and green desert flora was a sight for sore eyes after the black, white and endless gray of the Montana winter. Here’s Sporty set up for the first night of camping this season.

The campground host said it has been a cool spring and that they had survived a major windstorm earlier in the week that had blown over a truck camper in the campgrtound. Glad to have missed that one!
We met an interesting woman AnnaBelle from Whitehorse in the Yukon travelling around the Southwest in her customized Sprinter. She had much good advice for traveling the Dempster Highway in the Arctic which we hope to do later in the summer.

One of these days we have to spend more than a day in Valley of Fire and check out all the short hikes, but next morning it was on the road to Joshua Tree National Park. Here’s more great red rocks around the campground.

There was not much blooming at the higher desert elevations in Joshua Tree yet, but the Octotillos had leafy out.

Finally, we ran into flowering Ocotillios in the Borrego Badlands in the eastern reaches of Anza Borrego on Tuesday.

Before camping at Arroyo Salado on Tuesday night, we travelled down the wash to see the 17 Palms Oasis.

Here’s the Expedition Photographer and Sporty stopped at the Palm Grove.

There were several flowers in bloom, not all of which I have identified yet.

Around the campsite were dozens of Desert Lillies, a spectacular flower we have never seen in bloom before.

This morning, we drove over to Borrego Palm Canyon Campground to check out the blooms surrounding the mountain foothills. There’s a ton of flowers to see, including these white blooms (Datura?) and the brilliant pink Sand Verbena.

More news from the road tomorrow. Lots of fellow Sportsmobiles sighted and even an EarthRoamer from Montana.

 

[Ed in Montana]

1600 HOURS PST FRIDAY March 19, 2010 ANZA BORREGO DESERT STATE PARK, CA
SPORTSMOBILE AND OTHER STRANGE BEASTS SIGHTINGS

We started to see Sportmobiles as soon as we reached Nevada last Sunday, including an old 1990s white model in the Smith’s Grocery Store parking lot in Mesquite at around noon.

Sunday evening we met Annabelle from Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory and her sister Susan from Vancouver BC. Here they are in front of Annabelle’s wide-body luxurious Sprinter. Don’t know who made the Sprinter, but it was one of the nicest customizations I’ve seen.

Then in the Lake Mead NRA visitor center parking lot on Monday, we saw this strange beast. Some sort of habitat module grafted onto a tractor trailer, with Ontario plates.

Saw a bright red RB Sportsmobile headed east on the Salton Seaway at noon last Tuesday as we reached Anza Borrego. That Sporty had a lot of fun toys hanging off of it.

There are two E-250 2WD Sportys camped here in the Borrego Palm Campground for the last couple of days. Nice people.

There was this neat EarthRoamer camped just down from us for two days, but I never got a chance to talk to the owners, even though they had Montana plates. From Bozeman, I think. What an amazing truck. Pricey though.

This morning (Friday) a newer silver EB 4WD Sporty drove past at the Anza Borrego visitor center parking lot at 0800 hours as we were getting ready to go on the Hawk watch. Pretty cool Swainson hawks roost up in the Borrego Valley on their migration north and we saw a couple of dozen of them.

Afterwards, we went exploring up Coyote Canyon, and ran into this monstrous MAN truck military RV.

It must take a lot of diesel to turn those eight sets of wheels!

Lots and lots of flowers this spring. So many that I can’t post many of the pictures due to wireless roaming limits. More tomorrow before we move north to Mojave National Preserve and Death Valley National Park next week

 

[floorguy_724]

Awesome pics and write up man! Keep the pics coming!

 

[Ed in Montana]

0800 HOURS PDT March 21, 2010 ANZA BORREGO DESERT STATE PARK, CALIFORNIA

It’s been a beautiful five days in Anza Borrego State Park, doing short hikes and drives and seeing lots and lots of wildflowers. The bloom has been very good to my untrained eye, but long timers say the invasive Saharan mustard is taking over the best of the large carpet bloom wildflower sites.

Still, we managed to get some good pics. Here’s a patch of Sand Verbena on Henderson Road that park volunteers have weeded the mustard from.

Further up Coyote Canyon, Gold Poppies cover the slopes of Coyote Mountain.

Hiking up Borrego Palm Canyon before the weekend crowds last week, there were showy displays of Brittlebrush and Chuparosa in the dry wash.

The grove of native California Fan Palms is always a beautiful spot, especially with its waterfall flowing full blast due to the wet winter.

On a smaller scale, there were blooms of Bigelow Monkey Flower in sheltered places amid the rocks.

The cacti are all in full bloom, including this bright Beavertail Cactus.

Here’s a Barrel Cactus flower along the Palm Canyon Trail.

It’s going to be hard to leave this wildflower spectacle, but it is off to Death Valley National Park, which will have fewer crowds and fewer wildflowers. More from Furnace Creek in a few days

 

[saabman]

Afterwards, we went exploring up Coyote Canyon, and ran into this monstrous MAN truck military RV.

That seem to be a Swiss vehicle, the flag there on the front red background white cross is the Swiss flag... and the registration plates look familiar too... So I guess there must be a good bank account fuelling those 8 wheels :b1:

Wonderful photos as always :b5:

 

[daveb-SMB]

Great report as usual Ed. Can't wait to see how DV's wildflowers did this year. So, what's been your warmest day so far?
Dave

 

[Ed in Montana]

Hello Dave. We had several days in the mid to high 80s in Anza Borrego last week, but it was mostly cooler and breezy in Death Valley NP this week.

 

[Ed in Montana]

2000 HOURS THURSDAY, MARCH 25 TWIN FALLS ID.
After a long transit of the Great Basin from Mesquite Springs Campground in northern Death Valley NP to southwestern Idaho, we are collapsed in a motel in Twin Falls and only a half day's drive away from Big Sky Country and home.

Internet posting was non-existent in Death Valley at Furnace Creek, with no Verizon broadband service and the little connectivity from the WiFi at the visitor center, so there is a lot to catch up on. But it will have to wait until we can find dinner some place close.

There was only one place in Death Valley NP that had much in the way of wildflowers, and that was in the southern reaches of the park below Jubilee Pass and along some of Wade Road. Still we had fun driving the extreme south entrance road along Wade Road from Dumont Dunes past Saratoga Springs (very cool), backcountry camping below sea level along Wade Road and hiking to the slot canyon at Willow Creek.

The veg is green around Mesquite Springs but many of the plants have started to flower in a sort of micro-bloom, with nothing bigger than an inch or two. By far the best bloom was Anza-Borrego SP this year, with next to nothing in Joshua Tree NP, Mojave NP or much of Death Valley NP.

More after food and drink.

 

[SierraHawk]

3/25/10 Death Valley is alive!! Lots of annuals (less than 1" tall so far). 75% of the valley has significant new growth showing. If conditions are right, they may turn into a series of carpet blooms of wildflowers starting around the first week of April. No rain slated for the next week but temperatures are in the 70s. If there is a storm or temps remain mild this may be a great year for wildflower photography in DV. Peak is expected around April 3rd to 12th. Follow the wildflower reports on Desertusa.com