Topic: Recent Trip to Anza Borrego

[FrankB]

Met up with some friends for a day in Anza Borrego, mostly around town to check out the sculptures, but we did take a ride out to Fonts Point.  Rae (in her Jeep) and Mark (in his Frontier) - in Fonts Wash.



The Giant Sloth Family are my favorite - here's Mother and Baby Giant Sloth.  I think these are about life size.  Hard to believe they actually lived here.



Father Giant Sloth is pretty cool too.



The Sea Monster is cool too, but it was hard to get a good shot with all the people on a Sunday, especially in the mid-day sun.



There are a few more on my blog.

[JFanaselle]

Kind of ironic Frank. I ended up out there as well on Sunday with the family and with my cousin in his Jeep. I had to back out of DRV because of my steering rack woes, but after discovering that the clunk in the front end is coming from the UCA, we just couldn't let the beautiful weather on Sunday go to waste.

So we headed out to Borrego Springs early in the morning and spent a few minutes hopping around town and checking out the sculptures as well. My cousin parked his Jeep next to the metal jeep sculpture just north of the serpent and got some cool photos. Even at 9:00 am, we struggled with the same issue of too many visitors to get really great photos.

We decided to head southeast into Fish Creek and tried to get back into Sandstone Canyon. I planned on dropping by DRV to say hi to everyone, but we were headed that way right in the middle of the scheduled raffle time so decided we'd try to stop by afterwards instead. After checking out an absolutely destroyed rental motor home in Fish Creek (and chuckling at the guy who kept saying "don't worry, I bought the insurance!"), we did the short hike to the wind caves and then ate lunch before heading to Sandstone. Unfortunately, there was a fresh rock fall less than a mile back in the canyon, and we quickly came upon a group of 15 or so jeeps that were blocked ahead of us. They were from a San Diego based club and were using winches and hammers to try and clear the fall enough that they'd be able to climb over it, but they still had a couple of hours of work before their (heavily modified) rigs could make it, so we knew we didn't have a shot.

On the way back out of Fish Creek, we had a brief chat with Celt on the radio but couldn't quite hook with he or Sage Bromax, as they had already departed DRV and were well ahead of us by the time we hit the hardball and aired back up. For our route home, we opted to head east to the 86 expressway and I showed my cousin the old Salton Sea Naval sea-plane base before we headed north into the Coachella Valley and then home. It was a gorgeous day out there, and I wish we would have crossed paths with you to at least say hi.

[FrankB]

Kind of ironic Frank. I ended up out there as well on Sunday with the family and with my cousin in his Jeep. I had to back out of DRV because of my steering rack woes, but after discovering that the clunk in the front end is coming from the UCA, we just couldn't let the beautiful weather on Sunday go to waste.

So we headed out to Borrego Springs early in the morning and spent a few minutes hopping around town and checking out the sculptures as well. My cousin parked his Jeep next to the metal jeep sculpture just north of the serpent and got some cool photos. Even at 9:00 am, we struggled with the same issue of too many visitors to get really great photos.

We decided to head southeast into Fish Creek and tried to get back into Sandstone Canyon. I planned on dropping by DRV to say hi to everyone, but we were headed that way right in the middle of the scheduled raffle time so decided we'd try to stop by afterwards instead. After checking out an absolutely destroyed rental motor home in Fish Creek (and chuckling at the guy who kept saying "don't worry, I bought the insurance!"), we did the short hike to the wind caves and then ate lunch before heading to Sandstone. Unfortunately, there was a fresh rock fall less than a mile back in the canyon, and we quickly came upon a group of 15 or so jeeps that were blocked ahead of us. They were from a San Diego based club and were using winches and hammers to try and clear the fall enough that they'd be able to climb over it, but they still had a couple of hours of work before their (heavily modified) rigs could make it, so we knew we didn't have a shot.

On the way back out of Fish Creek, we had a brief chat with Celt on the radio but couldn't quite hook with he or Sage Bromax, as they had already departed DRV and were well ahead of us by the time we hit the hardball and aired back up. For our route home, we opted to head east to the 86 expressway and I showed my cousin the old Salton Sea Naval sea-plane base before we headed north into the Coachella Valley and then home. It was a gorgeous day out there, and I wish we would have crossed paths with you to at least say hi.

Sorry to hear you were not able to drive very far up Sandstone Canyon Joe.  That narrow spot in the pictures that I showed was about 1.3 miles into the canyon, and we parked not too far past that.  It sounds like this new rock fall is even closer to the mouth than that.  If you can get there on a day when there are not large groups, it's actually a nice walk.  Absolutely quiet until someone else shows up.  Also, it seems fairly flat when you are walking, the grade is definitely uphill, but it is very mild.

We were there on Sunday 2/17, not this past Sunday, so you didn't actually miss us.