Coyote Canyon

My wife had a quick weekend trip planned to visit some family in Phoenix the weekend after Surf 'n Turf, so the kids and I decided it the only logical option was to go camping yet again.  Made sense to me.  Camping is always better than staying home, in my opinion, plus the kids love it, so it works out perfectly.  With Anza-Borrego State Park practically in our backyard, it was an easy decision to go there.

With the Land Cruiser packed up, we home in the rain on Saturday morning.  Forecasts in the desert showed some light morning showers, but I figured we would be arriving at the tail end of that and we would pretty much have the desert to ourselves as most of the tourist traffic would be scared away.  Plus, I had been down to the desert a couple times when the weather was rainy or snowing in the mountains above the desert, and then when you dropped down into the desert floor, the weather would be absolutely perfect, so I liked my chances.

We got down to the park headquarters in Borrego Springs, and I went to check trail conditions just to make sure everything was open and no flash flood warnings.  It was still sprinkling lightly, but I figured it was ready to clear soon.  I wanted to camp at Sheep Canyon.  There is a primative campground there (basically just a firepit and shade structure, if you can even call it that).  But the appeal with that site for me was that you have to get there via Coyote Canyon trail, which is really fun, and there is a fun hike back into Sheep Canyon along a stream that goes all the way up to a series of palm oasis and some waterfalls. 

The lady at the ranger station said Coyote Canyon was open, but said the trail might be really slick on the rock garden bypass, which my son heard and started freaking out that we wouldn't make it and it would be really scary, and all of a sudden did not want to go.  I had to remind him that we had done this same trail several times, and had never had a problem.  It was only once I told him that our Land Cruiser had "magic buttons" that helped us be able to make it up easy.  "Magic buttons" is far easier to explain than locking differentials to a 7-year old.

We headed out to the trailhead at the end of DiGiorgio Rd and aired down before heading out.  We got passed by a bunch of old Ford Broncos (apparently it was Bronco Days as we learned later), which was fun to see since my brother-in-law and a friend both have one.  The rain had almost let up, so things were looking good there.  One of my favorite parts of the Coyote Canyon trail is the water crossings.  The third crossing is through a wide section of creek where you actually get to go through a deep crossing with willows surrounding you and almost creating a tunnel.  I have been through it on previous trail runs with my FJ40 where I actually had water come into the vehicle under the doors (video of the crossing from a prior trail run).  Here is a video from one of our previous trail runs:

But when we got to the third crossing, we found that the Park Rangers had closed and bypassed it, which was very disappointing.  That was the always the best part of the trail.  But we kept going as the rain started to sprinkle again, just as we got to the rock garden bypass hill.  I remember doing this hill for the first time in my open-differential FJ40 on an organized trail run, and worrying I wouldn't make it.  But, with my current Land Cruiser, its almost too easy, but still fun.  With the rocks wet and my son still pretty nervous, I locked the center and rear diffs via the "magic buttons" for his peace of mind and we headed up the rock garden with ease.  After conquering the toughest section of trail, and him realizing we were going to be okay, we headed to the end of the trail and arrived at Sheep Canyon.

We set up camp and it started raining again.  This made very little difference to the kids as they climbed around on rocks and explored the area around camp without a care in the world and did not matter that they were getting soaked, they were having fun.  I, on the other hand, opted to go the dry route and hung out under the shade awning, which did its job of keeping me completely dry.  One of the park rangers stopped by on his rounds, and took a look at our setup and commented, "looks like you guys have done this before, you guys are on your own for the evening."  That was exactly what I wanted to hear, and we didn't see anyone else the rest of the day.  As it started to get dark later in the day, we got dinner going and the kids into dry clothes, and finished off the evening roasting marshmallows and making s'mores.

We woke the next morning to an absolutely beautiful morning.  The rain must have stopped sometime in the middle of the night and the skies had cleared and it was perfect out.  The kids didn't even change out of their pajamas, and they were already out climbing rocks again.  After a pancake breakfast, we went for a short hike around Sheep Canyon.  We packed up camp and headed back down the trail, stopping along the way to check out some of the desert plants, and surprisingly enough, there were some Ocotillo plants that were actually in bloom, which I did not expect in the month of November.

As we were heading back into Borrego Springs to come back home, I wanted to stop and check out these sculptures that I had heard about along the outskirts of Borrego.  Someone in Borrego Springs had commissioned an artist to create these intricate metal sculptures, and they line one of the major roads that cross-sects the town.  We went and saw the sculptures on the north side of Borrego, where the most famous ones were, and I was surprised how many of them there were, and just how big and detailed they were.  They are made of metal, so they all look rusted, which is what the artist intended, and they are very impressive.  There were all kinds too, from Indians, to dinosaurs, pre-historic animals like saber-tooth tigers and such, big horn sheep, a prospector and his horse panning for gold, elephants, etc.  All were very detailed and must have taken a ton of work to complete with all of the metal-work, and they all looked great. 

But the most impressive one by far is the serpent.  This one was the biggest and most detailed of the entire lot.  It is made to look as if it is coming out of the water as only parts of it visable above ground.  It was probably over 20 feet high, in stunning detail, and then it reaches so far back that it is made to look as it goes under the road to the other side of the street.  The kids had fun pretending that the "dragon" was coming to eat them.  It really was impressive, and I'm glad we went and saw that.  I can only imagine the amount of time and work that went into making that sculpture.

 

We had a fun little quick trip exploring the desert.  Much better than just sitting around the house for the weekend.

Surf 'n Turf 2011



 After going to Surf 'n Turf consecutively in '08 and '09, we missed the event in 2010.  The 2011 event was being organized as the 10th Annual, and potentially, the last official Surf 'n Turf event, so I wanted to go for one last time.  With this event being the largest annual gathering of Toyota Land Cruisers in North America, as well as it potentially being the last official event, I had a feeling it would be huge turnout.

I had been working to rebuild our roof top tent and awning that had been destroyed in our roll-over, and was hoping to get it all back together before the event.  I knew we could always use our ground tent as we had done in the past, but I figured it would be a lot more comfortable sleeping up on top, especially with the weather being unpredictable on the beach in Pismo in early November.  The awning was fairly easy to repair, but the tent was a little more of a challenge.  There was a huge tear in the tent wall, but thankfully my wife was able to sew it up and we weather-proofed it.  The bonus was that it was under the rainfly.  The custom hinged brackets had to be hammered back into shape since I didn't have a way to have them re-cut from a fabricator since the tent is South African made.  The all-weather travel cover was pretty torn up, and after attempting unsuccessfully to have a replacement imported in, I sent it out to be repaired by a friend of a friend that does airplane upholstery.  I finally got it back from him the evening before we were ready to leave and re-installed it, mounted up the tent back onto the load bars and bolted everything onto the Cruiser in the driveway in the dark.  The neighbors probably thought I was crazy.  Nothing like getting everything ready to go until hours before your trip.  But I was happy to have the roof top tent back in working order.

With the Cruiser packed up and ready to go, Marcus and I headed up early the next morning to beat the LA traffic.  One of the fun parts of the drive up is to pass and caravan up with some of the Land Cruisers that you see on the road as everyone converges in on Surf 'n Turf.  We ended up rolling into Pismo a little after lunch and headed to the beach to drive along the shoreline to camp.  We stayed on the outskirts of the camp.  I'm not a huge fan of camping in crowds, and I know sometimes the main camp can get rowdy with over 200 vehicles, so we elected to find a spot away from the madness.  We lucked out and ended up camping next to a really nice family from Northern California with a similar 80-series Land Cruiser.  They had a little girl that Marcus played really well with all weekend, so that was great.

The next day, there was a "poker run" activity scheduled through the Oceano Dunes.  We signed up along with our neighbors, and set out for the run.  We made it through the first checkpoint, and were heading to the next checkpoint along the dune ridges and ended up taking a bad line and sliding part way down a dune sideways and in a really bad spot off-camber.  I stopped, knowing if we tried to keep going on our own, we were at very serious risk of rolling down the dune.  Of course, this didn't sit well with my son (or really me either) after our prior roll-over experience, so he was pretty freaked out.  Thankfully, in a big event like this, someone spotted us in our precarious situation and with the help of a couple more rigs, we were able to successfully get pulled out to safety with no injury or damage.  That did conclude our poker run though, as our nerves were pretty shot at that point.  We went back to camp and learned later that someone else actually had rolled their FJ40 on the dunes and had to be evacuated for a broken leg, so we were very fortunate.

Even though this wasn't what I would classify as an expedition trip, it was a fun event to attend.  There were all kinds of great Land Cruisers to check out, and it was fun to meet up with a lot of new people and reconnect with some that we had met in the past.  And any excuse to go camping is always a good one in my book.

http://forum.ih8mud.com/trails-events-expeditions/487764-surf-n-turf-2011-a.html