Anza-Borrego State Park

by Phyllis Kaltenbach

Title

Anza-Borrego State Park

Artist

Phyllis Kaltenbach

Medium

Photograph - Photo, Touch Of Hdr

Description

It may be hot and dry but the Beautiful Anza-Borrego Desert is a lovely place to visit, either by a Recreational vehicle or by staying in one of the many motels or other areas nearby.
Anza Borrego. The FAA watermark well not appear on any of the beautifully finished finished products of ART.***
Geography[edit]
ABDSP is around a two-hour drive northeast from San Diego, southeast from Riverside or Irvine, and south from Palm Springs. The Park is an anchor in the Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve, and adjacent to the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument. The FAA Watermark will not appear on your finished product.
Visiting[edit]
Vista of the Anza Borrego desert landscape
ABDSP includes 500 mi (800 km) of dirt roads, 12 designated wilderness areas, and 110 mi (180 km) of hiking trails to provide visitors with many opportunities to experience the park's unique version of the Colorado Desert environs. Park information and maps, interpretive events and displays, and listening devices for the hearing impaired are all available in the Visitor Center.[2] ABDSP has wi-fi access in various sections of the park, as do 55 other California state parks.
Many visitors approach ABDSP from the east-Coachella Valley side via California County Route S22 and S78. Visitors can also approach from the west-Pacific Ocean side via California County Routes S79 or S67 and add experiences of passing through the high and forested Laguna Mountains, such as in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park.[3] These highways climb from the coast to 2,400 ft (730 m) above sea level, then descend 2,000 ft (610 m) down into the Borrego Valley in the center of the park. The great bowl of the surrounding desert is surrounded by mountains, with the Vallecito Mountains to the south and the highest Santa Rosa Mountains to the north. They are in the park's wilderness area, without paved roads, and with the only year-round creeks in ABDSP.
Flora and fauna[edit]
See also: Category: Flora of the California desert regions
and also: Category: Fauna of the Colorado Desert
Cactus in bloom
Desert bighorn sheep at Palm Canyon Oasis.
The habitats of ABDSP are primarily within the Colorado Desert ecosystem of the Sonoran Desert ecoregion. The higher extreme northern and eastern sections in the Peninsular Ranges are in the California montane chaparral and woodlands ecoregion.
The park features: bajadas and desert washes; rock formations and colorful badlands, vast arid landscapes, and dramatic mountains. The bajadas are predominantly creosote bush-bur sage with creosote bush (Larrea tridentata) and the palo verde-cactus shrub ecosystems with the palo verde tree (Parkinsonia microphylla), cacti, and ocotillo. In the washes, Colorado/Sonoran microphylla woodlands can be found. These woodlands include such plants as smoke tree (Psorothamnus spinosus), velvet mesquite (Prosopis velutina), and catclaw (Acacia greggii).[4]
ABDSP has natural springs and oases, with the state's only native palm, the endangered California fan palm (Washingtonia filifera). Seasonal wildflower displays can be stunning in any plant community association in throughout the park. The high-county to the north and east has closed-cone pine forests, manzanitas, and oak woodlands.
The oases are prolific with all types of fauna, especially for bird-watching. Throughout the park, visitors may see kit foxes, mule deer, coyotes, greater roadrunners, golden eagles, black-tailed jackrabbits, ground squirrels, kangaroo rats, quail, and prairie falcons. In the reptile class, desert iguanas, chuckwallas, and the red diamond rattlesnakes can be seen � with care.
Desert bighorn sheep[edit]
Some areas of ABDSP are habitat for the Peninsular bighorn sheep, often called desert bighorn sheep. Few park visitors see them, and the sheep are justly wary. A patient few observers each year see and count this endangered species to study the population, and to monitor its current decline from human overpopulation encroachment.[5]
Geology and paleontology[edit]
Panoramic view from Font's Point westward over Borrego Valley to the Laguna Mountains
The expanses of ABDSP's eroded badlands also provide a different view into the region's long-vanished tropical past. The inland of southeastern California was not always a desert. Paleontology, the study of the fossilized remains of ancient life, is the key to understanding this prehistoric world. ABDSP has an exceptional fossil record which includes preserved plants, a variety of invertebrate shells, animal tracks, and an array of bones and teeth. Most fossils found in ABDSP date from six million to under a half million years in age (the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs), or about 60 million years after the last dinosaur age ended.[6]

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February 28th, 2015

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