Soda Lake
We went camping at Carrizo Plain this weekend.
Carrizo Plain is one of the more remote, isolated places you can get to in this country. They warn you to fuel up before you go in… there is nothing in here for 60 to 75 miles in any direction. There are no homes or businesses of any kind -- just a seasonal visitor's center and crude camping mostly wherever you want. There is one main road which is sometimes paved and sometimes dirt, and then there are some side roads, impassable in the wet season even with 4WD, that go to abandoned ranches and corrals. There is no cell signal so if you get stuck here, you'll have to wait to be found.
Some years in spring the entire plain is luminously berserk with a riot of rainbow-hued wildflowers, but this year the rains came late and there were few flowers. We knew this before we came but decided to come anyway. Technically, the Carrizo Plain gets too much rain to be called "desert" but the tumbleweeds, ring of surrounding mountains, and vast dry lake surely give a desert feel to the place.
The flowers didn't show and the light was homely, so I took few pictures. But the place is strangely beautiful, almost overwhelming in its vast remoteness and we'll be back. We always come back to the blank places on the map.
Soda Lake
We went camping at Carrizo Plain this weekend.
Carrizo Plain is one of the more remote, isolated places you can get to in this country. They warn you to fuel up before you go in… there is nothing in here for 60 to 75 miles in any direction. There are no homes or businesses of any kind -- just a seasonal visitor's center and crude camping mostly wherever you want. There is one main road which is sometimes paved and sometimes dirt, and then there are some side roads, impassable in the wet season even with 4WD, that go to abandoned ranches and corrals. There is no cell signal so if you get stuck here, you'll have to wait to be found.
Some years in spring the entire plain is luminously berserk with a riot of rainbow-hued wildflowers, but this year the rains came late and there were few flowers. We knew this before we came but decided to come anyway. Technically, the Carrizo Plain gets too much rain to be called "desert" but the tumbleweeds, ring of surrounding mountains, and vast dry lake surely give a desert feel to the place.
The flowers didn't show and the light was homely, so I took few pictures. But the place is strangely beautiful, almost overwhelming in its vast remoteness and we'll be back. We always come back to the blank places on the map.