The conference zipped through five days, and it felt like we didn’t have much time to do anything, even though I tried to limit the time running around the convention center so that I had some time to pause and digest everything.
We did manage to go to the zoo, took a walk through Seaport Village, and had dinner a couple of nights in Old Town. I didn’t remember much about San Diego Zoo from my first visit many years ago, but it seemed like they improved the organization quite a bit, and the option to hop on and off the express bus made things very efficient. The bamboo-eating nonchalant pandas and Orang Otang were definitely the highlights. Disappointingly, the gorillas were off the exhibit. After two days of lab visits, we were ready to get out of town on Saturday.
It was the third time for us in the deserts of southwest. It felt so familiar, yet so liberating. It never ceases to amaze, though. We did miss the wildflowers, of course, in November. Anza-Borrego started with greetings from the Border petrol officers at a checkpost. Didn’t think we would need to carry passports, after all we were not in Arizona! Thankfully, this was the only time we saw them. We continued on to the park. Mountain palm springs was the first stop. We saw several unique cacti and hiked in the direction of the palms for some time. It certainly was different from anything else we had seen in the deserts on earlier trips. We did make a few more stops on our way to Borrego Springs, but didn’t take another hike until we reached Borrego Palm Canyon. This was the only place in the park that charges a fee, and we were lucky enough to get a free pass! The lady at the Visitors Center had raised our hopes that there were unseasonable flowers on the trail because of October rains, and the ranger at the gate was perhaps sympathetic to us that we (and the lady) were naive enough to believe this. Anyway, we did manage to see at least one plant with some flowers on it, but as the lady had warned us, to her credit, ”nothing spectacular”. My feeling was that Anza-Borrego is best visited during the blooming season — the desert vegetation, rocks and palms are great, but it’s really the flowers that can pack the real punch to the largest state park. By the time we reached the Saltine Sea, it was almost dark, cloudy and drizzling.
The Westin Desert Villa turned out to be everything the pictures promised, and better. Other than Davos, this had to be the best property we have stayed in. Thanks, Starwood. Well worth the 10000 points! Fully furnished one bedroom with top-notch facilities, great mountain view on the porch, a Bose sound system, and LCDs in both the living room and bedroom to boot. Add rice and hot chicken curry cooked in the kitchenette, and you wonder if you should stay in the resort rather than spending the day touring the desert! The national park junkies we are slowly becoming though, we had to visit the NP. This time, it was JTNP.
The name is somewhat lame, I must say. At least call it Joshua National Park, or Yucca National Park! We were glad that we entered the park through the west entrance, because the western/northern part of the park, part of the Mojave desert, was much better than the
Colorado desert section in the south. Our first hike was at Hayden Valley, and was the most scenic of the day. It reminded me a bit about being surrounded by Hoodoos in the Queen’s Garden trail at Bryce Canyon. Here they were — these no-name rock formations, surrounding the valley, with pines, cacti and other trees all over. Next up was Baker’s Dam. The trail was through a garden of Joshua trees. On the way to the dam were rocks with petroglyphs drawn on them. JTNP is a small park, and facilities are scarce. We realized around mid-day that we weren’t going to get any food inside the park. And we were already ready to refuel after two hikes! Then we made it worse on ourselves by taking an unremarkable trail to Skull Rock, which was easily seen and accessible from the main road, as we later found out. After hitting a few more spots, we were into the southern part of the park, which offered little variation in landscape.
The only point that looked nice was Cottonwood Spring, but we were tired and hungry, so we skipped the trail. There are other spots in this area deeper into the trails, accessible either by long hikes or by 4WD. Finally, we were on our way to Mecca and the Saltine Sea to watch sunset. As remarkable as the road to Mecca was, named Box Canyon Road, predictably winding through a scenic canyon, the town itself was pretty even more remarkable. Named Mecca, within a few miles of major resort towns such as Palm Springs, this place appeared to be stuck in a time warp of a small Mexican town. $2.38 for a big croissant, an equally big and delicious pineapple pastry and two cupcakes, cash only — are you kidding me ? No English signs, and no non-hispanics. There wasn’t a lot of time to go before sunset, so we headed towards the shore. Unfortunately, the western shore was grazed by the hills, and the sun had already set behind it. We did get a glimpse of the sea at the North Shore, which is also the name of the town there. Back to the villa, we watched the Eagles-Giants game, which the Eagles won. After another home-cooked meal, we went to bed early.
We left Palm Desert at around noon on Monday, hoping to take a quick tour of the beaches by the end of the day. The Torrey Pines Reserve is definitely worth the $10 entrance fee if you take one of the trails.
The views of the city on one side and the ocean on the other were spectacular, as were the beaches. We spent some time watching paragliding at Gliderport wondering if we could ever do it! It was already past 3, so we headed to La Jolla Cove. Although we didn’t get down to the cave, it did look like the romantic spot it is billed to be. Our day ended at the Seal watching area where we watched sunset, followed by a drive through the upscale La Jolla village. It sure can rival Beverly Hills! After a nice dinner with Zhuang and Naoko, we headed for the airport. The flight was on time, and now we are stuck at Newark — 2 hours drive from home, waiting for a one hour flight that is delayed by 2 hours.