The Road to Borrego
Lately we have been taking excursions with Buddy, just because we have the time and we like the surrounding territory and want to explore more of it. We went up to see what there was to see in Temecula and just two days ago did the same up into Fallbrook and Bonsal. These are places we have been to before, but we somehow feel that there is more to see and do there than we have given credit to heretofore, and that seems certainly to be the case. A few years ago we rediscovered Oceanside after years of thinking it was just a Ricky-ticky coastal community adjacent to a military base, with all the incumbent hard core aspects. What we have discovered is a very different and more appealing seaside town with a nice pier and a few very pleasant restaurants. Its good to explore and stay open to rediscovery, even in your own back yard.
One of the more popular places where we go every once in a while is Borrego Springs, which sits 44 miles to the east of us. The logical divider in that direction is Mount Palomar, which is a nice motorcycle ride destination for me. Its nice because it takes you through ranch country, Indian reservations and then up into a nice alpine forested mountain setting. Some of the views along the way are as spectacular as any you will find anywhere. But if you go past Palomar you get out into what I think of as the real California, where the spreading golden fields that are the namesake of the state are dotted with green stands of live oak trees every here and there. Along the way you pass the Cafe at Lake Henshaw, which is one of my usual ride haunts. Just past that you will find, hidden on a side road, but just visible from the main road, Josie’s Hideout Saloon, which is where the heavy metal bikers tend to hang out. This is the real working ranch land where a blend of entrenched white ranching families and long-since immigrant Mexican families share the land and hack out a modest living in the otherwise dry and seemingly endless prairie. Once you go through Ranchita, with its taco stand and general store and not much else, you get into a typically western geography of a long distance mesa that stand a thousand feet above a desert valley floor off in the distance. In this case its the Anza Borrego Desert, the vast open plains that stand between us and the briny Salton Sea that separates Palm Springs from the Colorado Desert and, ultimately, the Arizona border.
You get down off that Pinyon Ridge mesa down onto the Anza Borrego Desert floor via the Montezuma Valley Road. It is one of those great roads that hugs the cliffs while giving vast panoramic views over the desert valley below. You have to balance the looking with the driving or you will be sorry. It is an inspiring sight to drive down that road into that valley. In February and early March there is the famous Bloom that has all the wildflowers bursting forth with all their might for their brief and glorious moment in the early spring sun. We have stumbled on that natural wonder once or twice, but find that if we go in search of it, it becomes illusive and hidden, leaving us disappointed. Better to just go out to the desert when the spirit moves you and enjoy whatever the desert has to offer on that day. This is our plan for today. Buddy is getting restless in the car so we put down the window in the warm 80 degree heat and let him feel the wind on his face. This settles him down just long enough to get us to the circle in the middle of town, where our favorite restaurant and gallery sit.
As we order our lunch and sit outside in the shade, we watch motorcycle group after motorcycle group pass by as they circle the central roundabout trying to decide which road to follow next. One of the local flora that particularly intrigues Kim is the Ocatillo, which is plentiful all along the roadside. I bought an Ocatillo once and it did not do well outside the dry desert climes. Therefore, rather than waste my time and money again, I purchased for her a dish towel with an Ocatillo on it to be able to claim that I finally have given her an Ocatillo that will last. We made an impromptu decision to go back via Julian rather than return as we had come. The road to Jillian out of the Anza Borrego is just as spectacular as the Montezuma Valley Road. It is called Yaqui Pass Road and takes you down to Rt. 78 heading back west to Julian. Julian is an old ranching town that has been designated a California Historical Site so that it will keep its quaint setting and feel. It is the pie capital of San Diego, so we stop for Kim to buy their famous Apple Pie and a cherry pie to boot.
We continues down the mountain from the always-busy Main Street of Julian to go through Santa Ysabel and ultimately Ramona. From there we head down San Pasqual Valley Road that hugs the side of the mountain and drops down into a valley of well-manicured citrus trees. We pass the Sam Pasqual Battlefield, the site of one of the early battles for this land between Mexico and local Californians. That gets us to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, which is a wonderful natural zoo that we go to often. We are back in Escondido and the car and Buddy know their way home from here so I put it on autopilot.
This is the time of year when you feel that it should be warmer and so taking a trip to Borrego Springs is a good way to remind you that warm weather is near at hand, both geographically and seasonally. In another month it will be hotter in Borrego Springs than we would like, so it was a good time to plan our brief visit. We bother to call my daughter Carolyn on the way home and ask if we have ever taken her and the granddaughters out that way and she says she thinks not. Kim has noticed some berry picking places along the way and feels that a day trip out that way this summer will be a good activity to plan for the girls. That will have to happen in between the Disneyland trip, the week of horseback riding lessons and our several planned jaunts to the beach, but I’m sure we will find a slot to accommodate a short desert jaunt.
One of the things that most attracted me to this area of the North County of San Diego was that there are such wonderful and nearby day trips like out to Palomar, Fallbrook and Borrego Springs. The natural beauty of the desert and the generally magnificent landscape in every direction makes this a great launching point for these sojourns. The road to Borrego is not only close by, it is ever-changing and yet ever-constant. I doubt anything has changed on that route in the five years we have lived here and yet every trip yields some new sight that we hadn’t noticed before. That makes the road to Borrego our little slice of heaven.