Goodbye Gomorrah

We have left Palm Springs! And it's not really Gomorrah, it just sounded good. I suppose it's as Gomorrah as you want it to be. For us, as it happens, not so much. We had a good time: H improved his aquatic skills, we saw a few things, had a few dinners out, did a bit of shopping, played a little golf, and we really enjoyed being out of the rain, but we were a little shy on Gormorrah stuff.

The last night in PS, H got a new hat!

And before that,  A&H went to the Living Desert where they got to ride a camel . . .

. . . feed a giraffe . . .

. . . and brush a goat, among other things.

We left yesterday morning under cloudy skies, and are heading right into the same kind of weather that we left when we arrived a month ago -- EL NIÑO IS BACK!!! -- but not for a day or two, so we carry on. We are in Acton, California, in the Antelope Valley -- high desert country -- and we've come to see the poppies at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Preserve.

The Preserve is a state-run park on 1800 acres in the Antelope Buttes area

One never knows when the poppies are going to burst forth into bloom (along with other sympathetic cacti and wildflowers), or how splendid it's going to be. It's different from year to year -- depending on the weather, but given that there was a lot of rain this year and it has been unseasonably hot lately, we were hoping that we might luck out and see the sight in all its glory. Alas it was not to be. But we did see its beginnings, with scattered concentrations of bright orange poppies and a few intrepid lupins and several species of charming yellow blossoms here and there, so all was not lost. And it wasn't all that hard to imagine what it would look like if you caught a good year at the right time. Plus we had a lovely walk up and down hills along the trails and saw meadlowlarks and hawks and beetles and lizards and miles and miles of rolling hills. It was beautiful. We were very glad we came.

The greatest abundance of California Poppies grow in the Antelope Valley.

Beetle behaviour was riveting for some of us.

Western Fence Lizard.

There are nine miles of trails here, but no antelope anywhere in the valley, not  anymore.

The Joshua trees are just starting to bloom.

A few patches of poppies and other wildflowers gave us an idea of what it might look like.

Another reality of the high desert.

A little rest near the top of Antelope Butte. Windy day.

After we left the preserve, we topped the day off with a hunt for a geocache -- which was successful and especially rewarding because no one had visited this one for a year. And we were rewarded by a lovely field of wildly orange poppies against the light green shrub they call rabbit brush. This was all followed by a visit to the same park we stopped at last time through, with time on the teeter-totters and some fun play with a nice little girl named Audrey.

M&H examine a good geocache find (by intrepid A) in the middle of a patch of desert -- and the only clue was "Bush".

It hadn't been logged for a year, but there was still lots of neat stuff inside the cache. H traded an action figure for an orange plastic heart.

Usually we just drive through this area without stopping, so it was neat to stay for a couple of days and get a sense of the place. Acton, Palmdale and Lancaster have histories in their own right, mostly related to mining and the aerospace industry (Edwards AFB, of aerospace fame, is here), but lately they have become bedroom communities for LA, which, along with other factors, has caused the population to explode. There are a lot of large impressive looking homes around, and in Acton the hills are covered in small tidy ranches, mostly horse with a few llamas thrown in. Tipi Hendren, who starred in Hitchock's The Birds, gave up being a movie star soon after she became one and built an exotic animal sanctuary, Shambala, which is in Acton. The California State Prison system has a facility in Lancaster, home to 127,312 inmates, which also, um,  impacts the demographic. The area is alive with shopping malls, which look busy enough, but according to one fellow we met who has lived his whole life here,  Lancaster and Palmdale are tough towns with many problems, like homelessness, drugs, prostitution, and high unemployment. "There are places, just a block off the main street of Lancaster, where it's not safe to go," he said. He's a Cruz man, himself, but thought Trump would be okay, too. "People are fed up with Washington politicians," he said. It's a refrain. It's a movement. Look out.

The California State Prison facility at Lancaster, right on the road to the Poppy Preserve.

Sign on the notice board at the local organic grocery store in Acton. A theme.

Another sign on the local bulletin board. Pick your side.

R&H supervising a concrete crew at the RV park. The  man on the right had a lot to say about a lot of stuff.

It's been an interesting couple of days. We are off tomorrow, but even though we have a plan, we have yet to sit down with the weather forecast, which is pretty much about huge downpours, high winds, high surf and/or snow where geographically appropriate, in pretty much every direction except the one from whence we came. Hmm. Stay tuned.

Acton sunset (looking west toward LA).