One Extreme to Another

We left Carizzo Plain National Monument headed for another great place that I found online that we could stay for free.  We drove and drove and drove.  The views were great and we also saw some beautiful ranches! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We kept driving and driving some more.  We finally ended up at the campground only to find out that it didn’t quite work for us!  We did all of the homework we could before we went out too!  I saw pictures online, we made phone calls to ranger offices, etc, but still, it didn’t work!!  So, we ended up staying in a truck stop for the night, changed our plans, and headed towards the coast!  As we neared the coastline we could see Moro Rock in the distance.

 

I mean, given all the options, it made sense to us!  And once we were driving along Hwy 1 and made our first stop right along the beach and smelled the ocean, we knew it was the right decision! 

The drive to the campground was an interesting one.  We kind of knew that the Highway could be narrow at times, but it was WAY more narrow than we anticipated!  And lucky me, it was my turn to drive!  I had to actually come to a complete stop and wait (for a while) for all oncoming traffic to go by before I could proceed past an outcropping of rock.  If I hadn’t waited, the side of the rig would have been scraped off along the side!  YIKES!!!  Anyhow, after the white-knuckle drive, we finally arrived at the Plaskett Creek Campground and shoehorned into one of the few sites we could fit into and settled in for our stay.  It was well worth it!!  After we got all set up we went for a walk across the street from the campground to check out the beautiful sunset and views.  We were not let down! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day we took a drive further north up along Highway 1.  The wind was blowing like crazy, but it made it a beautiful day for photos! 

 

And of course we had to stop at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park.  This is always a MUST DO stop in this area!  The wind was causing some dramatic waves up and over the rocks! 

 

 

And one of our favorite views is the falls coming into the ocean!  It’s just not something you see very often.  You can see the fall better if you click and enlarge the photo. 

 

There used to be a house located here.  Can you imagine living here with a view like this???  I think I wouldn’t mind waking up and drinking my morning coffee while checking out this scenery!  How ‘bout you?  There are actually still quite a few people who live right along the coastline all up and down the highway.  Most of the time you can’t even see the homes themselves.  The sights along the oceanfront never got tiring though! 

 

 

 

 

 

Just a short walk off of the Highway gets you to Salmon Creek Waterfall.  You can barely see the top of it from the highway, but it’s worth the effort to get to it’s base. 

 

 

We took one day and headed out to hike up by Big Sur, but then couldn’t make it when they had part of the road closed.  The guy at the closure told us that if we were looking to hike, we should just hike at the state park there at the closure.  So, that’s what we decided to do!  We were at Limekiln State Park along Highway 1.  We didn’t know anything about the place, but headed in to the trails.  Wow!  What a great place we never would have known about otherwise!!  The trails followed along creeks and meandered through magnificent redwood forests!  We followed one trail out to the historic Lime Kilns that Rockland Lime & Lumber Co. used beginning in 1887 to extract, process, and export thousands of barrels of lime.  The lime was used for mortar in San Francisco’s earliest brick buildings. 

 

 

We came across a couple of these banana slugs while we were hiking around too.  Banana Slugs are the second largest slugs in the world and can grow up to 10 inches long!  They are often this bright yellow color, but can also have black spots, or look brownish, like a ripe (or overripe) banana. 

 

 

What an incredible little gem Limekiln State Park is along the coast.  If you ever find yourself in the area, it is definitely worth the time to stop by and walk around a bit.  So, like I already wrote, they had part of the highway closed and when we left the state park, they couldn’t tell us whether it would be open the next day (when we were planning on leaving) or not, but that it would be open between 4 and 5 pm that night if we wanted to try to get through.  So, we decided to return to camp, pack it all up, and head out a day earlier than planned.  We joined the long line of cars waiting for the appointed hour to arrive. 

 

 

 

At least we had some beautiful scenery to look at while we waited. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They did eventually open up the road, and we got on our way to our next adventure.  We had a wonderful time along this small portion of California’s coastline.  Hope you enjoyed coming along!  Happy Trails! 

Carrizo Plain National Monument

After leaving Arizona, we headed to southern California for some doctors appointment and such and then began our slow journey north.  We started by spending some time in a place neither of us had ever heard about before.  We went to Carrizo Plain National Monument.  It is almost 250,000 acres of land managed jointly by BLM, CA Fish & Game, and The Nature Conservancy.  I actually found it by seeing it on a map, looking it up online and then finding out that we could stay here in a campground for free for up to 14 days!  At that point, I thought, “Wow!  We gotta check this place out!”  And I’m glad that we did! 

 

 

The Carrizo Plain is an internal drainage basin where all of the surface water drains down to Soda Lake at the northern end of the monument. 

 

Soda Lake is one of the largest undisturbed alkali wetlands in the state.  With no outlets, during the summer months, all the water evaporates and leaves behind an expanse of sodium sulfate and carbonate salts.  Back in the 1880s, the saline deposits of the lake were mined for use at nearby cattle ranches as salt licks or for preserving meat.  Prior to 1908, the Carrisa Chemical Company constructed a 600 ton per month capacity processing plant to recover sodium sulfate that was used primarily in the production of craft paper, detergents and glass.  Today, they have a nice boardwalk in that you can walk out on to view the lake in whatever state it is in, depending on the time of year it is. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They have two different campgrounds here.  We stayed in the KCL Camp.  Both of them are quite primitive with no services and no drinking water.  For most of our stay, we were the only ones in the 8-site campground, which we quite enjoyed.  Behind where we were camped, there was a horse trail that we followed for quite a while one day out into the hills.  We got to see some amazing views of the surrounding area. 

 

 

 

 

 

And we definitely felt as if the birds were giving us our own personal show!  We saw so many raptors sailing around over our heads every single day!  It was incredible!! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There seems to be quite a bit of farming/ranching history in the area.  I wasn’t able to find out too much about it while we were there.  When we went to try to visit the Education Center, it was closed, but as you travel around there are many abandoned buildings and other structures that have fallen down.   

 

 

 

 

 

The other advice that I have to share about the place is be extremely careful not to visit during any big rain event.  We arrived the day before a rainstorm came through and then we stayed while it rained for a couple of days and then had time to wait it out a couple of days after it stopped.  As long as you have the time to do this, you will be fine.  Otherwise, the dirt roads coming in and out of the monument are made of clay and get very, very slippery and muddy!  We found this out the hard way and I don’t recommend it.  You also have to plan ahead because the monument is very isolated.  There really aren’t any kind of towns close by and the towns that are close by don’t have much to them so you have to make sure you have what you need when you get there.  There’s also no cell service and no WiFi unless you’ve got HughesNet.  We’ve got an AT&T cell & Verizon MiFi and neither had any service. 

All in all though, it was a great place to visit and I would definitely go back again.  I would just plan ahead a bit better, but once you’re there it’s a wonderful place to sit back and relax!  And if you stay where we did, you could be greeted every day by this little guy like we were.  Now who would love that???!!!!  Hope you enjoyed your virtual tour!  Come back again soon and happy trails!!

Why or Why Not

We left Congress, AZ and headed down to Why, AZ after hearing from some of our friends that Why was a nice place to go hang out for a while.  We also heard that Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was a pretty place to visit as well, so we thought, what the heck?  Why not visit Why?  The night that we arrived definitely did not disappoint!  It seemed to welcome us with open arms!! 

 

We stayed in is the BLM land just outside of town.  It’s just an open area that you can pull in, park your rig, and stay.  It doesn’t cost you anything, and there aren’t much in the way of rules.  As in, there are no particular generator hours, quiet times, etc.  If you don’t like what your neighbor does, pack up your stuff and move.  Here’s what the view was like looking out our side windows.  Not too shabby.  And the stars at nights were simply AMAZING!!

We took a day and visited Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.  We stopped by the Kris Eggle Visitor Center named after a park ranger who lost his life defending this park.  Sadly, this 28-year old was gunned down while pursuing members of a drug cartel who illegally crossed the border after committing a string of murders in Mexico.  It reminds us just how dangerous the job of being a park ranger can be sometimes.  The National Monument was established in 1937 and protects most of the natural habitat of the organ pipe cactus within the US.  These cacti are rare north of the US-Mexico border, but they flourish within this area. 

 

 

 

 

We took the 21-mile drive along the foothills of the Ajo Mountains.  The road really winds and dips within and among the hills and mountains. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This particular organ pipe cactus has an abnormal growth on an arm in the middle of it.  This growth is called a “crest” and can occur in almost all plant species.  What I find so fascinating is that this beautiful phenomenon is still unexplained in the scientific world! We stopped along the way to take a short hike up Arch Canyon where you can enter into some of the foothills of the high country of the park. 

 

 

These particular arches were formed by weathering, not wind.  A cycle of heating, cooling, and freezing causes cracks which gets fills with moisture, which then evaporates and leaves behind salt crystals.  The crystals grow in the cracks and then cause pieces of rock to break off a flake at a time to form the arches.  And Voila!!  These arches are rare in the park.

 

As we were hiking, I kept hearing this bird singing to us off in the distant, or so I thought.  All of a sudden, I looked over and there it was.  This Gambel’s Quail (Callipepla gambelii) just off the trail giving us a bit of show all to ourselves!  I love it when things like that happen!! 

 

In some areas, there were even some wildflowers that were beginning to bloom.  I was kind of wishing that we were here about a month later because I’m sure there would have been many more like these in bloom!! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All in all, this drive along the Ajo’s were just stunning!!  As we returned “home” afterwards, Ev, the camphost came over to share the amazing sunset with us and told us the story about the sleeping princess over in the mountains.  The sunset makes her easier to see. 

 

 

Then there’s also the tent with two wagons on the other mountain.  Did I mention how beautiful this whole area is??!! 

 

 

Then we got to just end the whole day with an amazing sunset with some clouds and incredible colors in the sky!!  So, if you find yourself down near the small, small town of Why, AZ and wondering if you should stick around and check out the the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, wonder no more.  As Nike would say, Just Do It!  Hope you’ve enjoyed the virtual tour!

Happy Trails Everyone!