Today we drove up Rockhouse Road to see how far we could get before the road became impassible.  There were plenty of spots where tire placement was important to avoid scraping the undercarriage of the truck.  At one point, Trish and Zaide held back a Desert Lavender bush so we could get through without scratching the truck:

Surprisingly, we managed to get all the way to about half a mile from where the “road” ends.  At this point, it may be passable for an ATV, but we weren’t going to push our luck:

Fancy hiking hair:

M waits for us to get going:

We hiked up the canyon for about a mile, where a wall of large boulders encouraged us to turn around.  Here we are coming back down to the truck:

On the way back, we stopped to hike down an “authorized vehicles only” road to find a water tower and manufactured home on a private inholding within the state park:

M had B photograph him fragmenting dried mud with his flying fists.  Look out, Chuck Norris:

After our action-packed off road adventure, we reluctantly said goodbye to Bubbe and Zayde who will be heading back to Las Vagas.  We got ready for our third Shabbos here:

Good Shabbos from Anza Borrego State Park:

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.