Anza-Borrego Part 6 — Finding Blue Sun Cave
March 15, 2019.
The night was one of the most pleasant we’ve spent in the tent — no wind to speak of, which meant that all the windows were down and the nearly full moon illuminated the rocky landscape around us until it set along the western horizon around 3:00am. Knowing that this could be a great place to catch sunrise, I’d set my alarm for 6:30am to make sure that I didn’t miss it — so when I woke up just a few minutes before it went off, I decided I might as well get myself going. After all, I could see the beginnings of light along the horizon.
It was just a short walk through the boulders to a better vantage point, but that short walk gave me plenty to look at — orange the sunlight, not yet over the horizon, was reflecting off the clouds back onto the rock.
I continued my climb and soon found myself perched on a truck-sized rock as the sky really began to light up — first bright orange, and then as the sun got closer to the horizon, the orange changed to pinks and purples. The whole time, the landscape transforming as well under the colorful display.
Wondering if @mrs.turbodb was enjoying the display back at camp as much as I was, I made my way back, calling with our family whistle as I went. When I got back, she was still snug in bed — I forget if she was reading or not — having enjoyed a bit of the sunrise initially out the east-facing window, and now out of the west, where the sun’s rays were striking the hillside behind camp.
As she got herself up and out of bed, we decided that we’d skip breakfast for the time being so that we could get an early start on our day. Even though we’d already saved ourselves 4–5 hours by hiking to the Goat Canyon Trestle the day before, we still had a really full day ahead — the first order of business being an exploration of the Indian Hills area, in search of the infamous Blue Sun Cave.
So as @mrs.turbodb got dressed, I took care of putting away the tent, and then decided that it was a good time to get changed myself — which really just meant new socks and underwear — so that I didn’t end up smelling even worse than would normally be expected.
Plus, it would give me a chance to check out the big toe on my right foot. See, on our hike the evening before, there had been a photo I’d wanted to take where there was a small shrub in the way. Big-brains over here decided to kick it out of the way and as you can probably guess, the plant won.
Of course, I’d gotten what I deserved according to @mrs.turbodb (and Karma) so I couldn’t be to angry about the whole thing. As bad as it looked, I was still able to walk, and it didn’t seem broken. Plus, it would turn out to be the lesser of Big-brain’s injuries.
But now I’m getting ahead of myself.
Camp put away, it was just after 7:00am when we got on the trail towards Indian Hills — the sun now illuminating the rocks around us and shining directly in our faces as we drove due east — extra special since the windshield was dirty and the wiper fluid was empty!
Still, it was a fun road with some slow, semi-technical sections and we had a blast for the short 20 minute jaunt to our first destination of the day.
Indian Hills are named — perhaps obviously — for the Native Americans who lived in the area for thousands of years — extensive archaeological excavations in the 1950s dating artifacts back to 4,000 BC! And, while the area is well known, it’s secrets — or at least their locations — are less-so.
And that of course is what drew us in — this area is full of secrets, including some colorful pictographs that are the namesake of the Blue Sun Cave.
Knowing that the search could take a while, @mrs.turbodb got started on a pancake breakfast while I started to explore the square-mile-or-so area that we suspected encompassed the cave. And it wasn’t long before I made my first discovery: a yoni. From the Hindu word for female genitalia, they are, according to local researchers, “thought to be associated with female fertility”. This one was carved into the granite and then stained a darker color to set it off from it’s surroundings.
I continued to explore for 20 minutes or so until a bit of the decomposing granite slipped under my shoe and I took a tumble. Being just average height, I didn’t fall far — but still, decomposing granite is perhaps the hardest, roughest surface human skin will ever encounter. And when it does, well…
Luckily for me, my adrenaline kicked in right away and my little booboo hurt my ego more than my hand, so as a bit of blood dripped onto the ground, I continue my hunt for pictographs. But only for 10 minutes or so — because I got a family whistle that breakfast was ready!
Besides the luxury of pancakes in the desert, being back at the truck for a moment presented a good opportunity to clean up my hand and get a band-aid, so I did that and looked over my camera which I’d also dropped — luckily nothing seemingly broken, though the body definitely looks a little worse for the wear.
As one does, we ate all the pancakes with a bit of haste and I related what I’d found so far to @mrs.turbodb. A yoni was extremely interesting to her, so as we set out again, we made a quick stop to check it out before dividing to conquer the rest of the area.
We searched for nearly two hours. I was high up in the rocks of the hills, she was low around the perimeter. Everything was extremely cool. But we’d found nothing, and we knew we couldn’t search all day — so we decided that we’d continue the search to “just over there,” and if we didn’t find what we were looking for, we’d add this to our list of reasons to return.
And then, just as we got “over there,” we hit the jackpot. We found a room I’d heard about — an enormous, house-size rock that created a room approximately 20' x 20', and 6' tall. Clearly a place that Native Americans had spent a bunch of time cooking — the soot on the ceiling an obvious sign.
It wouldn’t be long before we found what we were looking for — check it out at Finding Blue Sun Cave.
Originally published at https://adventuretaco.com.
