Earthquakes and cat tracks in Anza Borrego
I’d heard the name Anza Borrego quite a few times on our trip - always in the context of “you have to go there” but I’d really struggled to hear the spelling and my google history is an embarrassment of misspellings of the name! Borrego means bighorn sheep in Spanish but since our sighting of them in Red Rocks we hadn’t come across any more so we were beginning to feel like maybe we’d just got incredibly lucky over in Vegas - perhaps we should have tried the slot machines while we were there. We’d heard there were decent wildflowers though and Amy was interested to see what it was like having been here years ago when it was a very brown, desert-y landscape.
We spent one final night in the casino car park in Indio (one of the few places in California where overnight parking bans aren’t enforced) and then headed out to California’s biggest state park in the morning. As usual, we made a beeline for the visitor centre to scope out our plans for the weekend and look at their sticker selection. They had a gorgeous garden full of cacti which was where we discovered how deadly those cute little teddy bear chollas are. We were both wearing sandals and Amy managed to get a piece of cholla stuck between her shoe and her foot - ouch! I tried to pull the spines out but they were wedged right in her foot. Luckily (and slightly bizarrely) a random guy came running over with a multi-tool and used his pliers to pull the spines out. He was so psyched to be a hero!
Not the culprit - I just love how much this ball cactus looks like an easter nest
That drama over we loved the visitor centre! They had drawers full of animal tracks and skulls and really beautifully designed merchandise - I’m still regretting not getting a t-shirt despite the huge amount of clothes I have for living in such a tiny space. We asked the ranger on duty about backpacking but he didn’t really have any recommendations so we left to do one of the park’s most popular day hikes to a desert palm oasis. Unfortunately you can’t go all the way to the palms as they were burnt in a fire in 2020 and the soil is still really fragile but the hike was still incredible.
The trunks are charred and they’ve lost their skirts but the palms have recovered so well
For being in the desert it reminded me of Scotland - super lush and green with intermittent rain showers and rainbows. We had a couple of river crossings which felt much more doable after experiencing The Narrows in Zion and we really took our time bird watching with our binoculars along the trail. It did make me feel a bit sad for the birds when people kept asking us if we’d seen the big horn sheep and we’d reply “nope, just birds” - the birds were great! We saw some incredible colour changing hummingbirds; a bright yellow oriole and the red eyed phainopepla guarding their patches of desert mistletoe.
A huge rainbow over the desert
Getting rained on
We hadn’t bought our stickers yet (we buy a sticker for our mugs at every park we visit) so we returned to the visitor centre for a quick pitstop and, noticing it was a different crop of rangers on duty, we asked if they had any recommendations for backpacking again. The didn’t but luckily one of the women working on retail loved backpacking and came over to show us on the map where we could find some good campsites down Coyote Canyon - we were sold and decided to do a two night trip down there over the weekend. We prepared our gear in the car park (without really talking to each other - which would come back to bite us later) had some delicious burgers for dinner and found a really nice parking spot just off a roundabout on the edge of town.
This stand of flowers and cacti reminds me of a wedding bouquet!
The next morning we had a huge breakfast at a diner in town and then started out into Coyote Canyon. It’s a 4x4 road with three water crossings and our goal was to drive Big Buddy as far down it as we could then walk the rest and get off the road to explore the desert trails. The car did great and managed the bumpy road with no worries. We ended up parking just before the first water crossing although I’m pretty sure we’d have made it - we saw a Tesla successfully cross on our way back! Buddy is our home though and feels irreplaceable given the time and money we’ve put into the build so we didn’t want to risk it. So we parked up and ate the leftovers from our breakfast for lunch and then set off into the desert! Despite being a road, it was a gorgeous walk and it was fun to watch the 4x4s come through especially over the second water crossing.
Just before the third water crossing Amy spotted a hummingbird sitting on a tiny nest! The nest looked like it was part of the tree and that tiny bird sat on it was one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. It was sat so still and solidly and its eggs must have been tiny. Good luck to her - I hope that as I’m writing this a brood of baby hummingbirds are leaving that nest.
Can you spot the hummingbird? It’s right in the middle of the frame
Once over the third crossing we could leave the 4x4 track behind and wander towards a palm oasis beyond which the woman at the visitor centre had said there were some nice camping spots. It was very quiet and surprisingly dry amongst the palms and I spotted some cat tracks in the sand! We carried on down a flower-lined path and eventually popped out in a dry riverbed with some raised spots that looked like the perfect site for the night.
It was at this point we realised that we probably hadn’t brought enough food with us! But we had a delicious meal for that first evening so we decided to worry about that if/when the time came and enjoy our freeze dried beef pasta. It was a pretty early dinner and the sun was getting low in the sky. We’d just finished and were sitting on the ground together when we felt something really weird - it was as if a wave had rolled under our boat - except that we were on dry land. We looked at each other and immediately thought it was probably an earthquake. It was a slightly terrifying moment - what if it gets worse or a bigger one comes?! Neither of us remembered the survival books we’d obsessively read as kids (I had at least!) but we figured that there weren’t any cliffs, pylons or roads around so we were probably pretty safe where we were.
It was a very strange experience to feel the earth literally move under us
When we left the desert I did check online and there had been a 4.2 earthquake not too far from Anza at just the time we’d felt the jolt. Generally people will start to feel earthquakes measuring a 3 on the Richter scale so we weren’t just going desert crazy!
We went for a quick sunset walk down the riverbed and the sounds of the desert were incredible - such a huge range of birdsong as everyone settled down for the evening.
Sunset in the desert never disappoints
The wind blew fiercely all night and I regretted forgetting my kindle as I lay awake listening to it! But nothing can beat waking up in the wild and I went for an early morning stroll reliving my childhood days of getting up early to look (unsuccessfully) for snakes in the garden). Amy quickly joined as she was worried about me being eaten by a mountain lion and we did a nice loop back to the oasis before returning to the tent for breakfast. We saw two huge desert hares and a lot of sleepy cottontails but no cats!
After breakfast (and a crazy moment when a couple of F-15 jets zoomed over the riverbed with a huge sonic boom) we packed up ready to head over to another canyon for a day hike. Walking back out along the path we’d taken on our morning walk we were amazed to find both coyote and cat tracks! The cat tracks especially were really fresh and right over our footprints - it had even pooped there. Judging by the size it was either an incredibly lost housecat or, more likely, a bobcat. Even though we didn’t see it, I’m pretty sure it saw us - which is an interesting thought. I wonder if it came over to look at our tent while we were out walking…
Apologies for the poop picture! So interesting though - you can tell this is a cat because it has dug a scrape for its poop
This place was incredible for tracks! Amy spotted some roadrunner tracks which are really cool - they look like the letter X. And we saw lots more coyote tracks and some that could definitely have been a much bigger cat. You can tell the cat tracks because they don’t have a visible claw print whereas the canines do. Telling coyotes from domestic dogs seems a little harder but apparently coyotes will walk with all four paws in line - making a single row of prints whereas a domestic dog will have a more splayed stance. A lot of the tracks we saw were perfect single rows so we decided they were probably coyote tracks!
In the middle of the frame by the edge of the road you can see the X made by the roadrunner!
We were so surprised to see a full on campsite when we arrived at the entrance to Sheep Canyon, where we planned to day hike. The set-ups were amazing - all people who’d come in in 4x4s and pitched for the weekend - they’d brought showers, shade structures, hammocks etc. It was crazy how wild and remote that riverbed felt and this campsite was just two or three miles away. Such a blessing though - they had toilets! Not gonna lie, they were probably the grossest toilets I’ve ever been in (and top three for Amy!) but in the sensitive desert environment the alternative was pooping into a bag and carrying it out so we went for it. Sometimes the realities of backpacking aren’t so sweet!
The long bumpy road to the campsite
At the stream by the canyon we made our second unfortunate discovery of the trip which was that neither of us had packed our sawyer squeeze water purifier - all we had were some chlorine drops which should be effective but feel a little less bomb-proof than a filter. The water was also very sediment-y. We grabbed a couple of bottles full anyway and left them with our bags as we headed into Sheep Canyon proper. For the first bit there were a lot of off leash dogs but we soon left them behind and entered a real choose your own adventure scrambling over boulders to get to the palm oasis high above us. On the way we spied a baby chuckwalla who was definitely watching us - when we went closer it would run and hide but soon pop out again to look at us.
A full grown chuckwalla courtesy of Lindsey - the baby moved a bit too fast for photos!
Up at the oasis - it really was a proper oasis with a waterfall and everything! The water was running a dark reddish brown with minerals and it looked for all the world like a tiger was about to pop out of the plants and drink from the stream. Amy washed her hair in the water and we struggled to drag ourselves away as the sun was really heating up. On our way down we crossed paths with a couple of guys from San Diego (our next destination) and had a nice chat with them about the city before parting ways to grab our backpacks.
Enjoying the running water (and deciding whether it would be ok to drink!)
The desert salon is back in business
Back at the campsite we found an empty corner with a sliver of shade to eat lunch and boil our chlorine treated water. It was right next to the guys we’d met up on the trail and they invited us over to share their shade and a beer. 100% not an offer to refuse! We boiled our water and then headed over with our lunch. The beer was one of the nicest I’ve ever had - probably because it was so cold! Or maybe because we squeezed a lemon into it that we’d picked off a tree on the way in. Either way it was delicious and the company was excellent - we swapped backpacking stories with the three of them and relaxed in the shade before heading off to check out Cougar Canyon in the afternoon.
On the way over we finally saw a desert tortoise! It was enormous! And not all that happy because it had just been encouraged off the 4x4 road by a family. But we really loved to see it from a distance as it ambled off into the grass.
Heading off to eat some wildflowers. Side note - if you ever encounter a desert tortoise on the road, don’t pick it up to move it! It can make them release all the water they store for summer. Best to keep an eye on it and try to gently shepherd it to a safer spot.
We very quickly decided it was way too hot for Cougar Canyon and found a huge boulder to wait the heat of the day out under. I might have napped.
That is a nice boulder
Once it had cooled down we walked back down into the valley floor to find somewhere away from the hustle and bustle of the campsite to pitch our tent and discussed our water situation. We were doing okay - we had enough for dinner and breakfast the next morning and juuust about enough to get us back to our car where we had plenty more. Upshot was - we decided to try and hitch a ride out the next morning. Why walk down a 4x4 track when you can bump along at ten times the speed - the rangers had suggested we might want to do this to maximise our time out in the desert.
Not a bad morning view
We had a much quieter night thanks to some improved guy lines and got a relatively late start the next morning which I don’t regret at all. The first car we thumbed down did stop but only to angrily remark that they weren’t going where we were going - despite having no idea where we were going and it being a single track road heading in one direction. You can only laugh sometimes. A little further up the road we came across a couple who I think were called Travis and Stacey. They were in a really tricked out Sprinter van with their dog and offered us a top up on our water bottles and some fizzy flavoured water called Topo Chico - such lifesavers! The water was cold and, most importantly, hadn’t come from a river 24 hours earlier and our moods were buoyed significantly as we left, even though we’d missed out on a couple of good looking hitch hiking opportunities.
We loved this dog - and not only because his owners gave us cold drinks!
No worries though because the next car was a lovely woman called Ana who was heading along the road to scout out campsites. She agreed to take us back to the first water crossing and even offered to have us to stay at her home in Northern California - we did meet some really friendly people on this trip! On the way I realised I’d never actually done any off roading and going over the water crossings was an exhilarating experience with tiny Ana behind the steering wheel! She had zero fear and joked about having to replace the suspension on her car after this before depositing us safely at Big Buddy and turning around to claim a nice campsite she’d spotted on the way - what a babe!
It never not a relief to get back to Big Buddy in one piece! We set out course straight for the town of Julian to grab the biggest breakfast burrito I’ve ever seen and a slice of the most delicious berry and apple pie. Everything tastes so sweet after a few days out in the wild!
Despite the slight mishaps with water and not bringing our usual back-up food, it was such a great trip. It felt really wild, the flowers were gorgeous and it felt amazing to have the sun on our backs for the first time in what felt like ages. We didn’t want to leave Anza but San Diego was calling with the promise of a two week petsit and the chance to make some upgrades to Big Buddy after a good 6 or 7 weeks on the road to test him out and see where improvements could be made!
