Adventures in Desert Hiking

So once again, we took the desert, this time, back to an old haunt - Anza Borrego State Park, the closest swath of state park desert to us. Steve and I day tripped out with our friend and hiking compadre Michael (who is almost finished his dissertation, the lucky bastard).
We had planned on camping for the night, but weather reports of rainstorms made us decide on a day hike (and it was a darn good thing, because there were flood warnings on the radio all evening, and we got hit with hail and thunderstorms all night here at home. As we sipped on wine and ate the steak we were supposed to have cooked on our little stove, we were all happy we made the decision to just do a day hike!)
So here are shots from the hike up Coyote Canyon through - wait for it - Alcoholic Pass. No joke. Kinda perfect for us three. The wildflowers were SPECTACULAR - all the rain we've had this year has really made the desert bloom. Kinda awesome to see this little burst of color in an otherwise harsh, dry, scree covered environment.

Michael and Steve coordinated in their "matching" hiking gear.

Big clouds from the impeding storm

one of my favorite kinds of flowers - some have the red dot, some do not. Kinda like Queen Anne's lace?

Woohoo! Excited to be out of town. In the background, you can see the Ocotillo - very cool spiky cactus like things, with little red bursts of flowers at the end of their spiky tips. They can get up to 10 feet tall.

Steve is happy to be hiking as well - see the little red blooms on the ocotillo? Kinda neat.

Steve's awesome close-up of a cactus flower.

Purple fields of flowers at the mouth of the canyon.

Michael devours beef jerky on the way home, two-fisted style. ;)