Once more into the desert

The Wildflower Festival was this weekend, so I spent several hours on Saturday sitting at the booths for my various clubs (while Rocket Boy lost his mind trying to take care of the twins). But despite all the boxes that still need to be packed, we set aside today for a field trip. We're going to be leaving this area so soon!

Both RB and I really wanted to get out in the desert once more, so I suggested Surprise Canyon, in the Panamint Valley. When we visited there back in January we agreed that we should come back when the wildflowers were in bloom. Of course, nothing much is in bloom this year, but we thought maybe...

It's a bit of a drive out there -- through Poison Canyon to Trona, Searles Valley to Panamint Valley, the road to Ballarat, Indian Ranch Road to Surprise Canyon Road -- which is such a rough, narrow, rocky road.

Classic desert. I got almost teary as we drove along, thinking of leaving this strange world we've come to know. "You know," I said to Rocket Boy, "Once the twins start school in August, it's going to be thirteen years before we can come here again."

"How's that?" he asked, puzzled.

"Well, the only time we'll be able to come out here will be in the summer, and it's too hot to come out to the desert in the summer."

"There's spring break," RB argued. "And winter break."

"Yeah, but what are the chances we'd come to Surprise Canyon if we had one week to come out to the desert for a visit? We'd visit the relatives, we'd see the major sights. We wouldn't go to Surprise Canyon."

"Hm," said Rocket Boy.

When we reached Surprise Canyon, we found other cars parked there, and even a tent set up. Probably the guys camping there were hoping for a little peace and quiet. (And then we arrived.) We walked up the trail a little ways until we found a place to sit down and have a small picnic. Then we took the picnic stuff back to the car and headed up the trail in earnest. We were hoping to do some serious hiking...

...but after 15 minutes, the trail started crossing over the stream that runs through the canyon, and over, and over, and pretty soon the trail WAS the stream. Our shoes were soaking wet, and of course I hadn't brought anything to change into. So we decided to go back down. Oh well!

Surprise Canyon wasn't the wildflower paradise I'd expected. Too early? Or just not enough rain, despite the running water? Still, we did see flowers. When they aren't all over everywhere, you look more closely. And sometimes you find surprises.

This, I'm almost positive, is Stream Orchid, which my book says is "only occasionally found in the Mojave Desert." So we were psyched to find it.

There were bushes of this all over, and I thought it was a kind of primrose. But after studying my book more carefully, I have decided it is Rock Nettle. It's quite attractive, with all those pale yellow flowers.

And this! All alone amid the rocks near the stream. I'm pretty sure it's a Phacelia, though not sure which kind. I never would have seen this if there'd been wildflowers all over.

And we saw frogs! Can you spot this one? He's right in the middle of the picture, but you can't see his head. Baby B also said he saw a snake, but he went tearing up the trail to tell us and then tearing back down again to show us, and of course it was gone by the time he got back. He said it was orange, so we're guessing it was a Red Racer (Coachwhip), because those are very common out here (and not poisonous). Wish we'd seen it.

Since our hike ended so early, we decided to drive further across the Panamint Valley, and then take Wildrose Canyon Road to Wildrose Station. There's an enormous cool wildflower called a Panamint Daisy that you can sometimes see on that road (we saw it once), but not this year. Still, it was fun to wander around Wildrose Station. Apparently there were functioning stores and cabins for rent here until 1972 when the National Park Service got persnickety and closed it all down.

We had a little picnic (leftovers from lunch) at the picnic table that you can just barely see above and to the right of our car.

We went a little further and then turned around, in order to retrace our steps back to Ridgecrest. And on our way back down the road we saw the coolest thing -- quail! At least we thought they were quail. But they looked different. And they didn't have plumes. "What are they?" I shouted in desperation. "Oh, wait! Could they be Chukars?"

They were. (Sorry about the quality of the photo, but it was taken through a closed car window.) Three funny chukars (a type of partridge from India and thereabouts, imported here in the '30s and now happily settled all over the western US). I knew they were around, but I'd never seen one. So fun. And they were not very worried about us, walked right across the road in front of the car and on up the hill, instead of hiding in the bushes. Rocket Boy commented that they were the perfect game bird for lazy Ridgecrestians.

And then just down the road we saw one more interesting wildflower, which I would NEVER have seen if we hadn't been driving slowly, looking for more chukars.

I'm not 100% sure what this is, but I think it is Mojave Indigo Bush. It was just clinging to the side of the canyon walls (this photo is a zoom-in, taken from across the road).

On the way home, the twins were awful (tired, mostly), but Rocket Boy and I were pretty blissed out about the trip as a whole. And then as we approached Ridgecrest we noticed that the sky had changed color. No longer blue, now kind of whitish. And the wind was whipping the creosote bushes beside the road. A dust storm. You couldn't even see the mountains. I tried to take one more picture, but my camera's battery had died. "Just think," Rocket Boy said. "This may be our last dust storm in Ridgecrest."