GLOBETROTTERS MONTHLY CHALLENGE

Searching in Central California for Sensational Spring Superblooms

We were unsuccessful but we found similar though not super floral beauty in our local hills.

Two of our most prolific Globetrotter writers (and fellow Californians), Michael Rhodes and Michele Maize, inspired me to jump in my car and start my superbloom search.

Michael started it all in March by writing about his visit to Anza-Borrego State Park. Then Michele and Anne Bonfert announced on April First that the Globetrotters challenge for this month would be Floral Beauty around the World. A week later Michele wrote about her trip to Diamond Valley Lake.

Michael’s destination is in San Diego County, about 8 and a half hours from our home in San Francisco’s East Bay. Michele decided to drive east from Orange County to Riverside County to visit Diamond Valley Lake, which is about seven hours away from us. Both southern California locations are a bit too far for us to drive on a two-day trip.

So, we decided to concentrate on the wildflowers of central California, a bit closer to our home.

We had volunteered to drive our grandson back to school in Fresno after his spring break and thought about making this a two-day road trip. The plan was to drive him to his dorm after dinner, spend the night in a nearby motel, and begin our superbloom search the next day. We hosted a family brunch on Easter Sunday and then pointed our car toward Fresno, two hours and twenty minutes away.

Initially we thought our superbloom search would include Kern County and San Luis Obispo County. Way back in 1978 we traveled to Lake Isabella in Kern County east of Bakersfield during Easter Vacation and passed many hills and fields that were exploding in color.

Then cursory Google and Youtube searches confirmed that the Carrizo Plain National Monument near San Luis Obispo would be the best bet for viewing a superbloom in all of central California.

But Lake Isabella is a two hour drive southeast from Fresno and the Carrizo Plain is also two hours away southwest of Fresno. So, we decided to focus on wildflowers closer to Fresno and ventured out the next day to follow the Fresno County Wildflower Trail which starts in North Clovis just a few miles from Fresno State and loops through the Sierra foothills northeast of Fresno.

Well, we never found our superbloom and we got lost a few times in our wildflower search and what was supposed to be a two-hour drive on the wildflower trail loop stretched to four. But we did find some flowers. The two most prolific species were yellow-orange fiddlenecks and white California popcorn.

Back in Fresno we filled the car up and headed northeast to get back home. But we had a Plan B if the Fresno tour didn’t turn out well. On the way home we could take a detour and see if we could find our superbloom in Pacheco State Park. So, we drove up US 99 as far as Merced and then drove on highway 152 west to I-5 and slightly beyond. It was the “slightly beyond” that got us. We got caught in a massive traffic jam near San Luis Reservoir and never made it to Pacheco State Park.

After being stuck in traffic for an hour we found a break in the center divider and made a U-turn not far from the Romero Visitor Center at San Luis Reservoir, which turned out to be a convenient bathroom break. There were some nice views at the visitor center and also some interesting displays on the history of water projects in California and how some forward thinking by both state and federal government officials 60 years ago turned our state into the world’s food basket.

So, Plan B didn’t turn out so well, either! To make matters worse, we got stuck in another traffic jam on I-5 just past Santa Nella. One of the two northbound lanes was closed because of paving. They also were painting the white dotted lines between lanes and naturally placed cones into the only open lane, making it difficult for huge trucks to stay in the one lane.

My wife took a half-hour nap and during the entire 30 minutes while she slept I drove a grand total of two miles!

We finally arrived home a few minutes after 6pm, eight hours after starting that wildflower trail loop!

Two days later I decided that I didn’t have enough photos for this story and so decided to visit a nearby park to see if I could find some more wildflowers. No superbloom but I found more poppies and lupine than I did on that Fresno trail!

Toward the end of my hike in Dublin Hills I stopped to gaze at this south view. That’s Dublin Blvd in the foreground and that’s the I-580 freeway at the bottom of the hill at the base of the wooded hills. No superblooms but if you look closely you might spy some purple lupine on the hills to the right.

It was about 4:15 on a Wednesday afternoon and I thought of one of the perks of being retired. Here I am enjoying my hike and here they are trying to get home in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Most of these drivers probably work in San Francisco, San Mateo or Oakland and have probably been driving for an hour already. And they probably have another hour or two to go before they get to their driveway in Tracy or Manteca or Modesto. And these are the drivers who left work early. In another hour there will be twice as much traffic!

So that’s the story of our superbloom search. Next time we’ll drive to the Carrizo Plain!

Michele had a much more successful superbloom search at Lake Elsinore:

And here’s Michael’s account of his visit to the Anza-Borrego Desert:

Thanks for reading!