Improbable Lands

After our hike to the hot springs in the morning we went into the center of Valle de Guadalupe and went to 3 wineries. The first stop was less a winery and more a boutique wine craftsman. There are no signs marking the blue-green colored house and the puppy that greeted us didn’t mention the wine. We followed a group of other wine seekers to the back of the property until we were motioned to follow the others down the stairs. Descending into Don Raul’s low ceilinged cellar was like entering the secret lair of a pirate. Don Raul’s booty was his wine. He had two; a grenache and cabernet. The bottles themselves were unlabeled. Both were delicious. We left with a case as a friend who had visited this lair before requested some. We went to 2 other bigger wineries after. Baron Balche was fancy and their ‘tour’ of the cellar was a brief walk through. Adobe de Guadalupe had tastings in their tiny store outside the winery itself which is closed to the public as the owner lives there and runs an Bed and Breakfast. The wine blends were smooth and rich. There was also a small gardens outside the store with a food truck. The food there was perfection. We had a dish of spicy beef tongue with potatoes and shrimp that was the best thing l’ve tasted in a while. The Miguel wine blend we ordered with our meal might very well be a new favorite. The owner’s Weimaraners wandered around the patio to say hello and get head scratches from us and our fellow diners. We wandered back to our camp site under the stars and slept like babies that night.

Today we drove from Tecate into the Valle de Guadalupe, the wine region for Baja California. We drove behind some of the wineries and camped on some land owned by a rancher. It seemed to be a mostly unmaintained campground. Past the campground area there is an easy hike to a waterfall that wasn’t running right now and a some secluded hot springs you can find by keeping an eye out for the palm trees. Stunning little valley with bouldery hills and a stream running through it all. 4 wheel drive was helpful in a couple spots getting there, but not really needed. Only an hour or so down from Tecate, but already the light pollution is largely gone and the stars come out at night to say hello like old friends you’d been missing.

We stopped on the way in at L.A. Cetto winery which had a fun little tour. It’s the oldest and biggest winery in the region. We tasted wine before and after our tour and picked the brain of tasting hosts for other good wineries in the region.

We did a side trip to Rumorosa today. Near Rumorosa is Vallecito with rock pictographs you can visit. It’s a short 1 mile hike with about six different sites. Friendly cows are roaming the area. The rocks themselves are gorgeous showing the effect of time, water and wind on stone. Such awesome shapes. Perfect canvases for the pictographs.

We also went and saw some old government buildings at Campo Alaska. The main building seemed to be a museum, but it was closed so we just walked the grounds while it drizzled lightly. After we stopping in the main part of town for steak at La Cabana de Abuelo. Yummers.

We crossed over into Tecate! Crossing was simple and quick here. Our rig was barely glanced at. We walked over first to get our tourist cards, but driving probably would have been just as easy. We had a taco lunch and a tecate snack. Sadly the brewery is closed to the the public for remodeling now. We went on to a campground a few miles out of town to reassess and acclimate. Rancho Ojai had laundry and was largely abandoned for the winter. The worker in the office said there was a fairly large group of Menenites staying in some of the cabins, but we never saw them. They had a two nights for one winter special so we decided to stay tomorrow night to and will excursion to Rumorosa tomorrow.

Today was a travel day. We drove a couple hours to Portrero which is just 5 miles from the border of Mexico at Tecate. We stopped at a little winery at a Ranch in Campo. The dogs and the proprietor were all smiles and happy yips. Bill had a lovely chuckle. I think sometimes the chuckle compensated for a lack of hearing :). The smaller dog, Tippy, took a real shine to Malachi the Wonder Beast and snarled at the poor old cattle dog to keep him away. Wine was tasted. Wine and dogs make this girl happy as can be.

We stayed the night a Portrero County Park. The closest place you can get to the border. Lots of trees. There was a giant caravan of RVs heading for the border the next day too. The Wonder Beast is getting quite used to the camping life. We bring his bed right up to the fire at night. All these campgrounds in east San Diego have a bevy of oaks and at this time of year the leaves are crunchy under your feet. Nothing could be more satisfying.

Off road beginners day with Just Runs club in Corral Canyon. The Grolar Bear did great on a couple tricky parts of Espinosa Trail. We maneuvered successfully around some low hanging branches with Zack Attack snapping off a dead branch from the top of the camper in one spot. I think most of the jeeps from the club were surprised at how sturdy the Grolar Bear was.

So this was our adventure overnight. We ended up meeting Autumn the little sneakerton’s Dad. He and two other guys offered to take us on a couple 4x runs with them in their Forerunner, Jeep and side by side. We went on 2 epic rock crawling runs with them. The guys all belong to Latitude 33 Offroad club. Sidewinder and Broncos Peak are 2 of the ‘most difficult’ runs in Corral Canyon. The picture shows one of the guys is actually hanging off the side of the forerunner in an effort to balance it out. This was after a smashed window and ripped off fender. These guys were crazy. It was wild, exhilarating fun and we learned some good lessons we might be able to use on rougher roads with the Grolar Bear.

Drive to Agua Caliente from Ocotillo

The adventure begins. Once again, we are Zack Attack (man), Tara the Dactyl (woman) and Malachi the Wonder Beast (doggo) and our trusty camper, The Grolar Bear. Our goal, to explore new lands and see wondrous sights and, I suppose, to live deliberately in a Whitmanesque sort of way. We don’t take ourselves very seriously though. Our level of serious is very low indeed.

We left San Diego in the afternoon after loading up on supplies including extra dog food for Malachi the Wonder Beast. The Wonder Beast has very particular food needs. Currently we have him eating Pura Vida which suits his sensitive belly well. As an afterthought, we also got a few human food items since the Wonder Beast is sometimes stingy about sharing his food.

Since we were leaving from San Diego we decided to drive out to the desert first. We got off the freeway at Ocotillo and checked out Agua Caliente County Park. I had heard about the mineral hot springs there. The park was nice, backed against the big, bouldery hills that are so typical of east San Diego County and Imperial County especially in the Anza Borrego region. More oriented to RVs than overlanders for sure though. The hot springs were not so much the hot springs I envisioned, but pools that were fed by the hot springs (piped in.) So not very rustic, just kind of nice pools. They were very nice for a dip after our hike though. We did a short hike that led directly off the campground called Moonlight Canyon. A fairly gradual grade through the rocky landscape led through a smallish slot canyon before looping back into the campground. The rocky slot canyons and the surrounding landscape of the Anza Borrego Region are quite unlike anything else if you’ve never been out that way. Kinda of like you’ve landed on another planet closer to the sun. We saw no Big Horn Sheep which are prevalent out in Anza Borrego, but we kept our eyes open.

We never did see the ranger, but self-registered at the kiosk. $24.00 bucks for a tent site and another buck for the doggo. I think is this typically price for San Diego County Parks. The tents sites were mostly abandoned and since the Grolar Bear is barely bigger than a large truck we snuck into one of those sites with a few more trees.

Hike to Spur Meadow

The spiky alien seed pod

DAY 3

We will be doing a 4 wheel drive meet up course in Corral Canyon Forrest Area on Sunday so we decided to just head in that direction as there are at least 2 campgrounds in the area. This area is in eastern San Diego not far off the 8 freeway.

We chose the Corral Canyon campground down in a secluded feeling little canyon full of oaks and some scattered manzanitas. Again we arrived and no one else was around. There is no ranger on duty here as all you need is an adventure pass to camp. Corral Canyon is a fairly popular OHV recreation area so the place is more set up for dirt bikes and atvs than anything else, but it is still a nice little spot. The only funkiness is that with a camper like ours you can’t drive right into your camp spot, They have it set up that you park outside the camping area and camping area itself, with a little fire pit and ample space, is enclosed by heavy duty metal barriers. It seems like they are probably just trying to prevent the dirt bikes from tearing up all the landscaping. They do leave a little narrow opening that Malachi the Wonder Beast managed to find his way through as he couldn’t jump the barriers with his old man haunches.

As we had our pick of the spots we picked one in the middle with a nice old oak providing some good shade. We scavenged the other camp sites for some firewood and ended up with enough for a nice little fire. We had a late lunch so we had a popcorn dinner by the fire.

A couple groups of folks with dirt bikes pulled in after dark and stumbled around finding spots. I fully expected to hear the rumble of dirt bikes in the morning, a sound I always liken to a pack of angry bees.

DAY 4

The angry bees were indeed in effect in the morning, It was fun see them tearing out of the campsite onto several trails that lead right off from it. We strolled around with Malachi the Wonder Beast in the morning and I gathered a bunk of fallen oak scraps to toss in the fire that night.

We talked with one of the bikers and he said it was no problem to hike the trails. You get ample warning when a biker is coming your way because of the ‘angry bees’ noise and have plenty of time to get to the side of path out of the way. We went on a trail that lead up to a vista of rock and shrub covered landscape with parts of San Diego and Mexico in the distance. I caught a few pokemon up on the hill when my cell service popped back in and we found a really interesting spikey seed pod of some sort we had never seen before. We searched for gold amongst the scattered rocks, but alas none was to be found. I am constantly tempted to collect pretty rocks and so found it very hard to ignore some of the prettier samples of quartz striated with bits of black rock. We really have no place in the camper to store a giant rock collection through. We were unable to resist a particularly pretty red rock. We will prevail upon a friend coming to the 4 by meet up to take it home with him until we are back in town. We are goofs.

We had a nice dinner of some curry sauce with veggies and rice and sausage from our favorite butcher in San Diego. Sepulveda Meats has the best meat and the beer brauts are a favorite of Zack Attack’s.

We had another fire and sat around it diddled with various projects. I threw sticks on the fire and then made some smores. Smores are messy by the way. It is impossible to make one and not become a sticky mess. Yummy though. Zack read the Toyota manual. He likes manuals a little too much. We made friends with a cute little pupperino named Autumn. Autumn came to visit us repeatedly and didn’t seem to care to return to her Dad when he called. Both Malachi the Wonder Beast and Autumn the little sneakerton kept finding old bones left on the ground. I was heard to yell, “Drop it,” in stern tones with great frequency.

4 by class tomorrow. Whoppee! We’ll see how much the Grolar Bear can handle as he is a little bit beefier than we had originally anticipated. The camper sits on our Tacoma and we made quite a few modifications to compensate for the extra weight, but we are still at max capacity especially for 4 wheel driving. Tomorrow will be a good gauge of things.

 

 

 

We decided to move on from the Hot Springs to something a little more rustic. A friend had told us about a hike a few miles to the north that led to some pictographs and another slot canyon hike called Smugglers’ Canyon. We headed into Blair Valley where we learned there were primitive camp sites to be had for free. The camping areas surround a dry lake bed. The only thing designating the camp sites are some dirt roads that snuggle up against the rocky hills that surround the valley and signs stating that no shooting is allowed and no fires are allowed accept in metal rings. No metal rings were there though. Maybe some people travel with metal rings? However, we do not. There were a few scattered campers (pops-ups, rvs and tow behinds) already set up in these areas. We had the windows down as the hot sun of the earlier part of the day was starting to abate. We waved to some folks as we passed.

 

We decided to keep on the dirt road (4 wheel drive might be helpful in a couple spots, but not needed) that runs about the lake and head to the trailheads. The road is part of what was the old stagecoach route in the area, the Butterfield Stagecoach Route. A small sign as you turned in the valley indicated the distances back to 3 hikes each a few miles away. One hike was for the pictograph trail our friend had mentioned and another for one for the Marshall South homestead (an early settler.) When we reached the fork in the road and had to chose we headed towards the pictographs. There was one more small designated (semi-designated) camping area on the way back to the trail head, but we heading all the way back as the sun was starting to set and found a few rustic camp spots at the very end of the road. We had the place all to ourselves. We pulled in just during that awesome part of the evening when the light bathes everything in that beautiful light that makes you take deep breaths and gaze at the simple beauty of the light playing on the rocks and landscape in a cinematic perfection. A stroll of a few steps around some rocks led to an awesome view of the valley. We made some food and enjoyed the sunset. Malachi the Wonder Beast sniffed rocks and peed on Agave. We played our music for whatever critters that might be dwelling in the rocks.

 

In the morning we took the pictograph trail and saw gazed upon the red markings on a giant boulder made by Kumeyaay Indians long ago. We stayed on trail until it headed in a slot canyon you could barely make out from a distance. This is the called Smugglers Canyon. I imagined in my head pirate like rum-runners or some such craziness, as I couldn’t imagine what else might have been smuggled out here in the desert. Maybe the name just comes from the hidden aspect of the canyon. The trail ended in a steep drop off with a view of the valley on the other side. The trail seemed to go on the other side, but the drop off would require ropes or some sort of bionic bioengineering that neither Zack Attack or I are outfitted with.

 

We headed back to our campsite only and began an episode which I shall call, “Attack of the bees.” Desert bees, apparently desperately thirsty had swarmed on Malachi the Wonder Beast’s water bowl. Even once we worked up our courage and managed to approach and overturn the water bowl (I should be clear here and give full credit to Zack Attack and a long tent pole for this feat of bravery) the bees apparently decided that the entire camper and our other assorted camping supplies must be the source of water and would not be convinced otherwise even as I shouted at them futilely that this was not the case. Needless to say, we packed up quickly as we could bolted down the road. One or two straggler bees had managed to get inside the truck with us, but gave up quickly once they realized they were now without companions. We escaped and hit the road for our next destination.