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 …