Wandering in the Desert, With Prehistoric Animals - Anza Borrego

It's been a while since we've been out to Anza Borrego Desert State Park or the town of Borrego Springs. Heather and I met up with some friends on Sunday for a bit of exploring and sightseeing in the desert. It's about a 2 hour drive over the mountains from San Diego, and that includes time to stop in Santa Ysabel and pick up a freshly baked apple pie to go with our picnic lunch.

We started off by checking out some of the steel sculptures of prehistoric animals that once inhabited the area. These works of art were commissioned by the late Dennis Avery and are found on various parcels of land he owned on the outskirts of Borrego Springs. Access to the sites, known as Galleta Meadows, is open to all at no charge.

Here's one of my favorites, mom and baby Giant Sloth. These are made from unpainted sheet steel, designed to rust like this.

Here's a close-up of mom's fur and baby's claws.

If you look closely in the background behind mom's rear legs in the first picture you can see another member of the family off in the distance.

Since I spend a lot of time taking pictures of big cats I had to get a shot of these saber tooth cats.

When these sculptures first appeared a few years ago, the story was that they were going to be depictions of the various animals that inhabited the area in prehistoric times. After a while the artist must have run out of actual creatures and turned more towards creatures inspired by fantasy, such as the sea monster. This thing is over 300 feet long, and actually straddles Borrego Springs Road.

We thought that the dancing velociraptor was pretty cool. The bright sun made for great shadows.

After spending a few hours checking out the sculptures we headed out into Anza Borrego Desert State Park, the largest State Park in California. There are over 500 miles of dirt roads in the Park, which covers 916 square miles.

We didn't drive very far this time, just over to a scenic lunch spot I knew of on Buttes Pass Road. Here's Mark and Mitch in my rear view mirror as we head east through San Felipe Wash.

I didn't get a lot of photos of the desert landscape this time, so I'll end with just this, our little group celebrating a long-overdue fun day of wandering in the desert.

Click here to see a few more pictures from Sunday, January 5, 2014 in Anza Borrego. You can also click on the Anza Borrego tag at the end of this post see other blog postings from previous trips.