Today we gave my parents a break and had an art day.  B practiced techniques from a “how to draw dogs” book she checked out from the library:

M practiced his culinary art by making a plate of scrambled eggs for me.  Thanks M!

B decided to paint the rocks that the kids had previously laid out to spell our blog name.  I hope it’s water soluble, “take only pictures and leave only footprints” and all that:

This morning John and I rode over Yaqui Pass to Tamarisk Flats campground. John continued on to Julian, another 25 miles down the road.  John’s wife Karen gave him a thirty minute head start and was about 22 minutes behind him when I passed her on the way back to the RV.

This morning we had one of the tangelos we bought yesterday.  Yum!

The six of us hiked up to where we built our Bighorn Sheep geoglyph a few days ago.  It’s faintly visible on the left side of the photo:
 

Other people have built a few other little geoglyphs here:

Continuing north, we crossed into the next valley:

This ant hill is surrounded by a refuse pile of seed hulls.  The ants eat the seeds and through away the hulls:

Taking out the trash:

Thanks to the rain this area received a couple days ago, some plants are flowering:

Looking down towards where we’re parked:

Coming back to the RV:

Today my parents decided to take a break from hiking, so we came into town and checked out new books at the library, filled up our propane, and gifted some trash to the dumpster at the Chamber of Commerce.  Most of the dryers were broken at the only laundry facility in town, so we took our wet clothes back to my parents’ resort to use the dryers there.

On our way home, we stopped at a fruit stand where they sell a five-pound bag of tangelos for three dollars.  A tangelo is a tangerine and grapefruit hybrid, isn’t citrus taxonomy fascinating?  Produce doesn’t get any more local than this:

Another beautiful day in paradise:

Today we took my parents on a hike we did last year in Palm Canyon:

After 1.5 miles, we reached the oasis of California Palms:

It was neat walking into the grove:

Endomondo only captured the hike back:

It started to rain as we hiked back to the truck.  We probably had a half-inch of rain back at the RV.  The valley smells wonderfully of wet creosote bushes.

This morning we picked up my parents and drove into town. From there we caravaned with a dozen or so other folks to Box Canyon, where we did a hike guided by volunteers from the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association:

The hike was 3.5 miles long and proceeded at a pretty mellow pace. There was a lot of interesting information told to us by our guides. This area was one of the routes used by people trying to reach the California gold fields. There’s also a section of the canyon where the Mormon Battalion used hand tools to painstakingly carve a ledge wide enough to allow their wagons to pass.

We also found wild apricot bushes in bloom!

Looking back up the canyon:

At the end of the hike, I pulled my bike out of the truck, changed in to my biking clothes, and rode back to the RV. This side of the mountains must have received some rain recently, because the Ocotillo and the Barrel Cactus look especially healthy: