Anza-Borrego Part 3 — Stymied at Sandstone Canyon

March 2, 2019.

We slept well through the night, our location mostly sheltered from the strong winds. What little wind made it to the tent was easily quieted by ear plugs, making for a peaceful night sleep. Most of the night passed uneventfully — a fact we were happy for given the weather report we’d seen the day before. We were right on the edge of a weather system — areas to the west expecting rain all day, areas to the east predicted to be dry.

But then, around 5:00am, a pitter-patter on the rain fly — we hadn’t escaped the rain fully. Of course that pitter-patter also meant that there was no need to get up early for sunrise — the clouds in the sky limiting the color we’d have otherwise seen. So, it wasn’t until 7:30am — when there was a break in the rain — that we rolled out of bed to take a look around.

Low and behold, the sun was sure trying — there was a rainbow over camp.

Our plan for the day was to start with a hike to the nearby pictographs, but with the break in the rain and no idea what was in store on that front, we decided to partially dry off and put away the tent before setting out. This turned out to be a bit of a wash as the rain sprinkled off-and-on for the rest of our time in Little Blair Valley, and we were going to have to fully dry out the tent later anyway.

With the tent away, we headed up the trail toward the pictographs. It really was a beautiful morning, the rainbow coming and going as the sun streamed over the horizon but under the clouds.

It wasn’t long until we reached our destination — a rock along the valley edge where over 2000 years ago, Kumeyaay Indians had stopped to camp, leaving behind a bit of rock art and a few morteros — bowls carved into large boulders used to grind pigments as well as various grains and food stuffs.

An interesting bit of knowledge that @mrs.turbodb shared while we were there was that pictographs are images painted on rocks using some sort of pigment and that petroglyphs are images carved into the rock. Additionally — at least in the Anza-Borrego area — you never find rock art with both geometric shapes and human/animal images in the same area. Weird, but there you go — perhaps it’s because the ancient people were respectful of each other’s work.

We enjoyed the pictographs a while longer before deciding to head back to camp and get on the road — breakfast-less — towards our first trail of the day and drier weather. And, as we started back, we noticed what I think was a special rock — one with the top stained a dark crimson — the same color crimson as the pictographs. My guess, is that this is where Kumeyaay Indians ground the various pigments that they used for the pictographs. A cool find if you ask me.

The trails in and out of Blair Valley were some of the nicest I’ve ever driven. A passenger car would have been fine on all of them, and we made great time — stopping only twice. The first was in a small diagonal washout so I could check on the travel of the rear suspension. Everything looked good — the bump stop was nearly touching the frame and I still had a bit of travel on the shock, the leaf was mostly flexed, but still had a little way to go, and the shackle seemed to be doing it’s job as well. Nice! (And whew!)

The second stop was very close to the end of the trail, just before we got back on the freeway. Like the yellow blanket we’d seen covering the floor of Little Blair Valley the day before, today we were treated to a purple display along the base of the hills in Blair Valley — making us extra glad that we took a different route out than we’d taken in the previous evening.

At this point, we had about an hour of driving to get to the maze of washes that we’d take north over the next two days. As we made our way east, we drove in and out of rain showers, the mountains keeping them mostly at bay to our south and west.

By the time we arrived at the Carrizo Badlands overlook — where we planned to have breakfast before heading into Canyon sin Nombre — the sky was mostly clear and it only looked better in the direction we were headed. I set about taking some photos of the spring bloom while @mrs.turbodb prepped our breakfast.

And then we were off — a short drop from the viewpoint down into the canyon and we were almost immediately in what I think was the most breathtaking canyon of the trip (at least so far).

Keep reading to see the photos — it’s all covered in Stymied at Sandstone Canyon on adventuretaco.com.

Originally published at https://adventuretaco.com.