Anza-Borrego Camping Trip

The week after the boys and I scouted out the Anza-Borrego Desert we went back out there for a weekend of camping on March 5th, 2005.

The weather looked ominous on our way to the desert

We had to take a potty break on the trip out.

And of course the boys took the opportunity get in a little play time.

It only took about two hours to get out to the Anza-Borrego Desert Park and the weather turned sunny as we went through Julian and started headed down the eastern slopes of the Cuyamaca Mountains. As I was not sure how long the good weather would last, we made quite work of setting up camp.

Both Will and Jake both helped setting up camp, but Will was my main helper with the tent. Camp went up with out a hitch but I did realize that I have my memory card for my camera at home. Lucky for me my camera has 14MBs of internal memory that allow me to scale down the picture sizes and quality enough to get what pictures I did.

	It did rain during the night but we we all sleep well and we awoke to see a nice rainbow right from the tent.

We went for a hike on Saturday on the Yaqui Well trail which was about a 3 miles long. The trail took us by all sorts cacti and other desert vegetation and blooming wild flowers. The boys were not too concerned with that although I was continually reinforcing the need to stay clear of the cactus. We took in some good views and by the time we got back to camp we were all hungry and ready for some hang out time. Casey and I took a inadvertently took a nap and boys managed to keep themselves entertained.
The Boys enjoying some hot chocolate.	Hanging out in the tent	Jake and Taffy	The Boys and Taffy	Will toting back some firewood.
A fishhook cactus	Later on that afternoon, we went on another hike that was only a mile long but was a little more strenuous. The boys did this hike the weekend before so that thought they had it down cold. The trails is called the Cactus Loop for a really good reason, it is chocked full of all sorts of types of cacti that makes it a natural classroom. Jake was the first to make a misstep and got a much of smaller cholla thorns in his hands. He cried pretty hard as I pulled out about a dozen of them out of his hands. Will was not exactly consoling his brother. Karma struck Will not 10 minutes later as he was haphazardly strolling through the trail and manage to get a very large cholla thorn right in his butt cheek. It took the use of pliers to get it out and it took a couple of good tugs as the thorns are barbed. Jake took great pleasure it calling Will "Cholla Butt".			A barrel cactus in bloom

	Sunday was our last day so after breakfast we started breaking down camp and by 11:00AM we were all packed up and headed back towards San Diego. We took a different route home swinging by Borrego Springs so the boys could get a souvenir. The weekend went by really fast but we go in a lot memories in.