It's getting hot down there...Let's move on up

You can see the Salton Sea (below sea level) in the distance

With temperatures moving quickly up into the upper 80's, it is getting too hot for us Washingtonians to stay in the desert any longer...wildflowers or not. So, we have migrated up to the town of Julian, in the Laguna Mountains at about 5000 feet. The temperatures up here are some 20 degrees cooler.

That little RV park down there is Butterfield, where we stayed for 4 nights last week

We'll stay up here for 3 or 4 days before beginning the trek to the coast and the slow migration up the coast back to Washington. These mountains contain Coulter pine and Jeffrey Pines, several species of oak, and the southernmost Big Cone Douglas firs in the world. However, most of it was devastated by the 2003 Cedar fire, leaving behind resprouting chaparrel vegetation, but few conifers.

The Laguna Mountains mark a steep and stark fault block that rises 6000 feet above the desert floor. All of Anza Borrego Desert State Park is visible from this ridgeline. It is also the rim that the Pacific Crest trail follows in Southern California as it marches 3000 miles to the Canadian border.

That trail you can see if the Pacific Crest Trail