This past weekend we ventured out and managed to get up to quite a bit of stuff!
On Saturday afternoon, we packed up and headed to Anza Borrego Desert State Park to camp and watch the Perseid meteor shower. On the drive up there we already started to see amazing views.
We decided to camp at Blair Valley Campground, where we had gone earlier this year. It’s a wild campsite, so the only facilities they have there are vault toilets. We got there just 30 minutes or so before sunset and started to set up camp.
We started setting up camp and realized that we had forgotten to bring any way to start our campfire. We didn’t bring our cooking stuff, because this was going to be such a short trip. So we went around to our neighbors who were scattered around the valley to see if we could get a lighter. Luckily just across the valley, a couple in an RV lent us a lighter! We eventually got a nice fire going.
Then we just had to wait until it got dark. Not long after sunset, the stars started coming out. Even though the moon was still up, we could see quite a few stars.
We had planned to stay up until midnight, when the moon was officially supposed to set. But it got really dark at around 11, when the moon went below the mountains. We were able to se so many stars. And we got to see some really good meteors. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to catch any of them on my camera, but it was definitely worth us making the effort to come out near the peak of the meteor shower. It was by far the most shooting stars I’ve seen in one night.
It was weirdly humid in the desert, because it’s been raining a lot the past few weeks. There were even puddles! In the desert! So we had a bit of trouble getting to sleep, because we weren’t really prepared to deal with humidity. But eventually we got to sleep at around 1 or 1:30am. Then we woke up just before 6am to catch the sunrise and get our stuff packed away before the sun hit the valley.
Even though the humidity made it hard to sleep, it did give us this incredible sunrise rainbow in the morning!
Then we were able to have our cold brew coffee watching the sun come up over the mountains and leave the campsite by 7am.
Our next destination was Volcan Mountain, where we planned to do the Five Oaks Trail. I had never been to this area, even though it’s only about 20 minutes away from Julian. The loop is about 3 miles (an extra two miles if you want to add the summit to the walk, which we opted out of this time). We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. We only ran into a handful of people the whole time. We were also greeted by the sounds of a distant bird of prey. I think it was a falcon based on the kinds of sounds I was able to find on YouTube.
We learned that the reason the trail is called Five Oaks is because there were five different species of oak along the trail. I’m a pretty big fan of the live oaks here in Southern California. I think they just look so spectacular. We also saw the Canyon Live Oak, which looks completely different. It has bright red trunks (pictured below).
The trail was steep in places, but overall was not too intense and had some really great views over the area.
At the end of the hike – or at least the point where you turn around, we got an amazing view over Julian and the nearby valley.
This was one of my favorite hikes I’ve done in the San Diego area – I would highly recommend.
Then we decided to take our adventure a step further. We went straight from the hike to the beach! We went to Ocean Beach, which we don’t often go to. I don’t think I’ve ever actually come to this beach to sit on the beach or swim. So we set up our little beach tent and hung out for an hour or two.
Then we went to get burgers at Hodad’s, where we got the most outrageous order of “frings” (fries and onion rings)!
It didn’t end there. We got home and had some downtime, but then met our friends to watch Spirited Away outside using one of our friend’s projector. It was a fun day and a half – we managed to do a lot of stuff after not leaving the house much in the past month.
