Another Carrizo Plains Trip Report

[calclimber]

After seeing some of the other Carrizo Plains Trip Reports I thought it was time to head back there since it had been a couple of years since our last visit. We invited some friends that we like to camp with to come along.

We left town Friday via highway 33 through Ojai and over to the Cuyama Valley and then the Carrizo Plain with plenty of daylight left.




We did some Geo Caching while we were out there. Searching for these little treasures takes you to places you might not go to otherwise.

 

[calclimber]

The first order of bussines was to find a good camp spot that wasnt one of the two orginized ones.




The wildflowers around our camp were awesome

 

[calclimber]

We settled into camp had some dinner some wine and a nice fire while checking out the stars. The weather was ideal.

 

[calclimber]

Saturday morning we had a light breakfast and started on our tour of the plains and Soda lake while picking up Geo Caches on the way, I think we got about 15 over the weekend.





We stopped at the visitors center for wildflower book of the area and any more info we could get and then off to the soda lake overlook.
We then worked our way to the other side of the valley and worked our way south always keeping an eye out for another good camp spot.

 

[calclimber]

We soon discovered If we were going to be able to stay another night we would have to pay off the Carrizo Mafia.



After the payoff we decided we would work our way back to the southern end and go back to the west side near our first nights camp was, that side seemed a lot greener.

We found another nice spot.



Yes there were wildflowers there to.

 

[calclimber]

We settled into camp had some BBQ chicken with mole sauce and some wine and of course a nice fire and some star gazing.




The next morning it was the big breakfast before a hike and heading home.



We had a great weekend and we look forward to going back next year.

 

[Ed in Montana]

Could you invite me on your next trip? It looks like we have similar tastes in refreshments for dinner.

Great pictures of the area! Do you know the names of the wildflowers there? I am not familiar at all with Central Valley native flora

 

[Blackeye]

Hey Calclimber,

Great report and pics. It looks and sounds like you combined the right amount of exploration and chillin at camp. We are working on that. Our normal MO is to drive / explore until it is too late to enjoy the camp experience. Thanks for sharing your trip.

Blackeye

 

[Ed in Montana]

Good point on camping timing Blackeye. We found that getting to camp too early in the day got boring after a while, but driving to 6PM every evening was too tiring. Then we had a series of basically no-driving days set aside just for hikes and those helped a lot on longer trips.

 

[calclimber]

Could you invite me on your next trip? It looks like we have similar tastes in refreshments for dinner.

Great pictures of the area! Do you know the names of the wildflowers there? I am not familiar at all with Central Valley native flora

I think mostly Goldfields.

 

[j.whitbread]

Cows are dumb.