Carizzo Plains, April 2019

"Come on, let's go a little further", Jon looked back at me. l glanced up the trail, headed straight up the mountain. It was mid-day, hot,and the light was harsh and jutted. A young couple just passed on the way down, warning of two rattlesnakes they had encountered in separate sightings up the mountain. Okay enough. "Nah, I'm turning back. I'll meet you back at the campsite" Though a steep- up hill is never a game changer for me and I'm not afraid of snakes, the idea of seeing a rattler and having to gracefully navigate away on a steep slope made me anxious to turn back. We had gotten into territory where the trail had become scree- uneven smallish stones that are more difficult to navigate when going downhill- for me anyway. 

On the downhill I always feeling like I am going to slip and go crashing down- out of control. My husband and friends who have hiked with me over the years know that I am like a nimble mountain goat going up a hill and have always been the slowest,and (hopefully) dearest grandma on the way down. It is a most peculiar phenomena, sometimes funny and sometimes just embarrassing. But if I were to come up with a less ego bruising reason, it was because I was after wildflowers and they were few and far between (p.s. Jon didn't abandon me. He scrambled ahead to see over the next hill and quickly rejoined me- and I was on my way down as fast as granny gear allowed!)

After all, wildflowers were what we were after. We had just driven 3 hours south into a wildflower storm, a "superbloom" in Carizzo Plains, a semi- arid grassland plain. It is located in the sparsely populated central valley of central California, east of San Luis Obispo and managed by the Bureau of Land Management. 


In very rare conditions of the right amount of rain, no rain, and the right temperatures timed correctly etc., etc. etc., this otherwise arid, mushroom colored landscape bursts into dense, carpeted flower bloom come spring and we had come to see for ourselves. We had found ourselves on the rare trail that presented no abundance of flowers. Hell, leave that one to the rattlesnakes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superbloom

 

The Easter Egg landscape was painted in variations of yellows and purples. Blue, orange and white showed up occasionally. Every altitude change, every tiny micro-climate brought surprises and variations of size. 
We found it an extraordinary, life time experience.