Southern California "Super Bloom"

Last month I was lucky enough to experience the "Super Bloom" at Carrizo Plain in Southern California. After so many successive years of drought, we finally experienced something of a reprieve with a wet winter - and boy were the results out of this world.

Carrizo Plain, the half-mile-high valley where these images are from, is a fascinating, desolate, and ruggedly exquisite place that seems almost removed from reality. Getting to the heart of it requires driving about 40-45 miles off the closest major highway, and then braving another 25 miles or so of dirt - or, at best, sporadically paved - road. Other than a few abandoned homesteads and isolated campsites, there's virtually nothing around except hillsides and sunshine.

Too bad I did not have a solar-powered car! Fortunately I filled up the tank of my hybrid beforehand at the last outpost of human civilization among the rather surreal oilfields abutting the foothills that lead to the valley.

The gas station looks almost like it's out of a David Lynch movie, doesn't it?

About me.