12th April 2008
I waited for spring ... and I waited for this trip for over an year. May be the wait associted with few things makes us apprecite them more :) A visit to witness one of the millions of nature's small wonders. A great escape to the Poppy World !!
Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve is a wonderful world of Poppies !! Endless fields of poppies !! Located 15 miles west of Lancaster-CA, Antelope Valley is nestled in the Antelope Buttes. The rolling hills here are draped with the fields of orange poppies. Patches of goldfields, lupines add a bit of contrast to the colors. It is very difficult to explain in words you just have to witness it.
On Friday, we started at 8:00PM from Sunnyvale, had to face the Friday night traffic. It wasn’t very bad as it was late in the evening. Spent the night in Palmdale. Saturday morning, we had the complementary breakfast, waffle with butter, bagle with creamcheese and coffee, in Days Inn before we started to Antelope Valley.
As we were on the Lancaster road after taking exit from Highway 138 poopies started to appear on the roadside. We could see the orange colored hills far away. Even before we reached the Reserve we had few long stops to take pictures. And when we were in the Reserve we saw the parking was almost full, we managed to get one with not much effort though :)
After applying thick layer of Sunscreen we started our hike. Antelope Valley has total 8 miles of hiking trails midst the poppy fields. The elevation gain is very less. The area is very exposed and Sun was always harsh on us. But, the cool breeze made our day. But, the breeze did affect the pictures. Could never get a macro in a single shot. Even the landscapes looked much blurry. But, I was happy to walk the endless loops of trails there. The websites mentioned that the winds are very harsh here most of the time, looks like we were lucky :)
Heena was trying very hard to get close up pictures and the wind wouldn’t allow her :)
Every few feet we walked the landscape looked different and we took pictures. There were yellow poppies too. Could be mutants. They were very few though. I hear there are few white poppies too, which I didn't see. The other flower which is common here is goldfiled. It adds the yellow contrast to the orange poppies. I saw few owl’s clovers, cream cups, and silver puffs. Forget-me-nots were all around too on the main butte.
Goldfield ...
Forget-me-not ...
Silver Puff ...
Lacy Phacelia ...
Pale Primrose ... 
Checker Fiddleneck ...
Red-stemmed Filaree ...
All these are Macro shots. I purchased this lens few days ago. And I am so happy with the results. At one of the vista points we both snacked on the trail mix and granola bar. After going around and round and round, covering all vista points we started heading back. Our plan was then to have lunch at nearby restaurant and head towards Gorman. We ended up having lunch at Quizno's Subs at Lebec.
We had great views of the hills at Gorman. The hills looked like they were painted with green, yellow, purple and orange. But, it was actually the wildflowers. It was a very beautiful drive but, we could not pull out the car on freeway for pictures. Somehow we manged to park the car at one place and walked a quarter of a mile to get some pictures. But, much beautiful part was long gone behind. I am happy that I did witness it. There is a Gorman Post road but it runs at the foot of those hills and we cannot get the 'painted hills' view from there.
Our next plan was to check out another place for wildflowers. Carrizo Plain National Monument. We drove all the way on lonely highway 166 and then on the Soda Lake road. The place seemed barren and deserted. There were no signs of wildflowers for long time. The place reminded us of Death Valley National Park. It was more lonelier than DVNP. My idea of visiting Carrizo plain was to see San Andreas Fault. But while driving I could only see mountains formed by it. When the fuel tank reading showed exactly half, we decided to headback to Freeway-5.
We listned to some bollywood music, Dil Chahta Hai and Kal Ho Na Ho songs. Also some Adnan Sahni boo hoo album Tera Chehra. Way back was very fast ... We had full dinner at Udupi Palace, El Camino Real, Sunnyvale. Hot sambar-idli and vada-chatni was yummy.
It was a great trip. Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve is a 'must see once' place. I highly recommend it.
9 comments:
Those flowers are some hevenly sent stuff............so enchanting, wonderful and you honestly and truly made my day , by those glimpes which broght me to your blog from fliker, thanks dear.
Thank you Anu. World is very beautiful, only we need to open our eyes to see it !! Just curious ... is this script Malayalam ?
Such a lovely post! Thanks for the feast Kusum.
omgoodness, as the first poster said, HEAVENLY! Thank you. :)
Thank you Mridula and Roop. Glad you liked this post. Yeah, this place is unusually beautiful in spring, though under harsh sun and fierce winds.
When we went down to Central Coast for wildflowers we were thinking of Antelope Valley too, but that would have been too hectic given our other plans.
Damn! I missed it. But at least now I know what it would have looked like. Nice shots.
Thanks Pooja, I have been to many places in search of wildflowers. But, Antelope Valley was beyond my expectations !!
Lovely..loved the poppies...seemed like a field on fire!..
Antelope Valley is absolutely beautiful. Gorman Post Road and several dirt road thru Gorman's Hungry Valley SRVA off Peace Valley Road is very nice too. However there are plans to build two huge preplanned cities in the area, Tejon Mountain Village and Centinnel, stretches from the I5 to the poppy preserve. More info at www.caopenspace.org. Thank you very much, your blog page is beautiful!
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