Poppy Reserve

Spring is flying by and we feel like we aren't appreciating it. Spring is the beautiful season in the desert, spring is when you need to get out and look around. Spring is also, we have learned, the time when the winds blow something awful and if you do go out, you'll be blown to bits. But we're doing our best.

Another storm is blowing in on Easter Sunday -- and out here storms really do blow in -- they don't rain, they just blow. So we decided to make the most of today, even though the wind was already howling, and went to the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve to see the hills and fields covered with California poppies.

The day got off to its usual inauspicious start. We left late (duh), around 10:15, and drove to Lancaster, getting off Highway 14 at Avenue I around 11:30. So then we had to think about lunch. Someday I am going to be the kind of mom who packs her family a delicious picnic lunch, not the kind of mom who drives around looking for a restaurant, but that is off in the distant future, around the time I also become the kind of mom who cleans her own house, makes salads out of heads of lettuce instead of expensive bagged lettuce, and gets her nails done instead of being a Bad Example by biting them.

We saw a Jack in the Box. No. We found a huge dreadful dying strip mall called the Lancaster Marketplace that had about 3 stores still open, including a Chinese buffet and a Mexican buffet, but Rocket Boy said No. We saw a McDonalds. No. We ended up at a restaurant called the Primo Cafe, sort of a cross between a Denny's -- and a Hookah Bar. I am still puzzled about this. Are hookah bars legal in California? How is that possible? What about the anti-smoking laws? The waitresses wore t-shirts that said on the front "Do you hookah?" and on the back "Come for the food... stay for the hookah." I did not smell tobacco, incense, or anything else that might have been from a hookah, so I'm still confused.

After a mediocre lunch accompanied by a lot of bad behavior from those in the party under 3 years of age, we drove another 15 miles to the Poppy Reserve. As we approached it, we started to see individual poppies, then patches of orange, then larger patches, and then off in the distance, hills covered with orange. And then, as we came around a corner, fields just drenched in poppies. People were pulling over, getting out of their cars, and plunging into the poppy fields. I kept thinking about the Wizard of Oz.

We didn't stop but drove on to the actual state park, where we paid $8 for the use of the parking lot (but that was OK with me, because the California State Parks need all the money they can get). The temperature was pleasant (maybe 65 degrees?) but the wind was blowing mightily, so we packed the babies into their BOB stroller and fastened down the weather shield. They like the weather shield -- it seems to make their stroller into a little tent, or cave, and protects them very well from either rain or wind.

Then we pushed the stroller up and down some of the many trails in the park until the wind became too much for Rocket Boy and me (we didn't have weather shields).

We drove back to Highway 14 a different way, on back country roads, which involved passing numerous other poppy fields. In one gorgeous field, a young Asian woman in a filmy white dress was dancing and posing, while 5 or 6 Asian men photographed her.

In the actual reserve there were the usual rules and warnings: stay on the trail, don't pick the poppies, watch out for the Mojave Green Rattlesnake which is an important part of the ecosystem but will kill you. It was amusing to drive past these non-reserve poppy fields and see people sitting in them eating picnics.

Maybe next year we will skip the Primo Cafe, skip the state park, and just drive to a random field, sit down in the middle of it, and eat a delicious picnic that I stayed up all night preparing. We'll throw crumbs to the rattlesnakes.

It could happen.