Head 'Em Up & Move 'Em South

We had a very long driving day today.  We left Ensenada about 7:30 AM with a destination to Catavina, 224 miles and 8 hours away.  We were on narrow, winding, mountainous roads most of the day.  When I say narrow, if we are not driving on the white line on the right hand side, then we would be knocking rear-view mirrors  of on-coming semis on the left hand side!  The first part of the drive was through several villages and among lots of agricultural lands growing things like asparagus, potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries, cabbage and several fields which I could not identify the vegetables.  They had long, long rows of green houses and white cloth covered structures.

Then we passed into the Desert National Park where we observed cacti, scrub and other desert plants. I was fascinated with the desert cacti called Giant Cardon cactus which are similar to Saguaro in that they have long ‘arms’ but these arms start at the bottom of the plant and grow as tall as the main trunk of the cactus.  They reminded me more of Organ Pipe Cactus.  The other plant that was prevalent is called Cirios or ‘Boojum’.  This tree is larger at the bottom than at the top so is shaped like an upside-down  green carrot.  It has very small round leaves on short, thorn covered stems all the way up and down it’s trunk.  The top will have yellow flowers sprouting from the top later this spring. It is similar to an ocotillo bush.

The last few miles before we camped for the night was through the ‘Rock Gardens’ where huge, car-sized boulder were laying everywhere with all the cacti and boojum interspersed.  Unfortunately the rood was exptremely narrow with no shoulder and no pull offs for me to get a picture of this magical landscape.

We literally circled-the-wagons in the campground around a nice fire pit at 4 pm.  Our fearless leaders fed us ‘Walking taco’s’ for dinner(at 4:30 PM because the sun set at 5 and it would get too dark to prepare the food).  Walking tacos are prepared with a small bag of crushed nacho chips you then top with taco meat, lettuce, cheese, etc and eat with a spoon right from the bag.  A bon fire and sing a-long rounded out the evening.