San Diego’s
Desert spring Next time someone kids you that San Diego has no seasons, show them spring in our Anza-Borrego desert — it’s no joke!
W
hen transplants to San Diego say they miss the seasons, what they usually mean is autumn leaves and an excuse to wear pretty winter clothes. But you almost never hear them lamenting the loss of spring — it can often seem like spring all year here, especially near the coast, so you might not even notice the season change. But farther inland, every year unleashes a remarkable spring like nowhere else. Just east of the Laguna Mountains lies the Anza-Borrego desert, the rugged setting for our region’s prized springtime transformation, an explosion of surprising life and raucous color. The experience of nature at her most performative is well worth the drive from coastal and metro communities. With a little planning, you can enjoy these wonders with a day trip or weekend getaway — check out Know Before You Go at the end for a list of all links and digits. Meanwhile, let’s take a look at what you’re getting yourself into!
What’s out there, anyway? With almost 600,000 acres, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is California’s largest state park, comprising an entire fifth of San Diego County and offering far more attractions than you can bag in a single trip (unless it’s a one-way trip involving a moving van).
The park straddles an active tectonic rift zone where the North American and Pacific plates compete, a history writ large in the area’s visible geology. Twisted layers of ancient ocean floors just high above alluvial fans, carved into dramatic shapes by long ages of harsh weather. The desert’s low rainfall means much of its flora lies dormant until bumper seasons, and life in general crowds around any source of water.
What should we do? The acknowledged superstar event of the desert spring is its wildflower bloom, when dormant desert plants revive with the singular mission to reproduce fast and madly before the heat of summer drives sane plants back into dormancy. Even after a lowrainfall winter like this year’s, March and April will prompt an abundance of flowers to emerge in their timeless race to seed future generations. And while superbloom years can practically hide the desert floor in a brilliant sprawl of jumbled patchwork, normal bloom years can be just as striking by framing each shock of color in context of the harsh landscape. The bloom attracts thousands of visitors. At its height, visitors can utterly clog local roads and overwhelm lodging. Your best bet is to start early in the morning — when dawn sees slackers still sleeping and natural light