Super Bloom!

If you live in Los Angeles, you know that we had a very rainy winter. Well, all of that rain paid off in the form of wonderful desert flowers that are popping up everywhere this spring. In fact, given these ideal conditions, the outcropping of flowers this year has now been dubbed as a "super bloom". Although these brilliant flowers can be seen along the freeways and in other areas of Los Angles, the best place to view them is in Anzo Borrego State Park, which is known for its gorgeous flowers this time of year. Not wanting to miss out on this experience, my husband and I ventured to the park to hike and take some photographs of the wild flowers and desert scenery.

Obviously, hiking around the desert calls for something more casual than what I normally wear, so I opted for this colorful t-shirt (it's actually a kid's size extra large from Target!) and my most comfortable jeans. In some ways we were lucky because although the weather was hot (it is the desert after all), the day we went proved to be more mild than most. Still, it was hard not to sweat so I may not be at my most glamorous in these photos, but that's real life!

My New Balance sneakers happened to match the scenery and the vivid floral colonies found throughout the park. Although I thought that wearing sneakers would be practical for hiking because they are very comfortable, hiking boots might have been a better option because I kept getting big pieces of cactus stuck to my shoes and, in one such instance, the cactus thorns were so long that they went through my shoes and socks and started poking me!

Speaking of thorns, the making of the picture below proved to be a painful experience! Before we took our trip to Anza Borrego, I came across an article in a newspaper about the super bloom that featured this exact tree with a couple sitting underneath it. It was such a lovely image that I wanted to recreate it, so when we drove past this site, I asked my husband to pull over. I promptly ran out to the tree to sit down, only to discover that I put my hands down on something that was very prickly and full of thorns! Well, my hand was covered in seemingly thousands of tiny thorns! This just shows the lengths I'll go to for a good picture!

The super bloom in Anza Borrego will still be going on for another week or so, although supposedly the peek occurred over the last couple weeks in mid-March. I highly recommend the experience, although be forewarned that it is crowded. We went on a Monday and the visitor center and some of the trails were swamped with people, so I can only imagine what it's like on the weekends. If you can't make it out there (it's about a three hour drive from Los Angles) or if you just don't want to deal with the crowds, then at least you can enjoy my pictures below! It was such a fun experience to walk around, take pictures, and enjoy the great outdoors. Even if I did get a hand full of thorns and stickers, it was a fair price to pay to experience a super bloom that only comes around once every 30 years or so.