Here we are packing the van at the back of our little duplex in Encinitas. We're getting ready to head out to the desert to meet up with our friends and fellow Sportsmobilers, John and Janet, visiting from Moab, Utah.

First Stop was Dudley's Bakery in Santa Ysabel where we stocked up on their special breads. We got the diet frosted cinnamon swirl loaf and a nice cheddar cheese bread.

We have had so much rain this winter, even the desert is green. This was taken looking east on the way down the grade on S22 heading toward Borrego Springs. Even Ramona was green!

This was taken from the same spot looking back up the road with the van on the shoulder. It was a beautiful day! You can click on any of the photos to see a larger version. You know that, right?

Here are Lorri, John and Janet posing by the side of the creek heading up Coyote Canyon near the Anza Borrego State Park Visitor's Center.

We had hoped to see varied and plentiful wildflowers in bloom and we weren't disappointed. Well, I was disappointed a little bit because I don't know what any of them are called, Janet was there to help out with that. I think she said this one is a Datura.

As we were hiking up the canyon we noticed these nice people dressed in orange jumpsuits who had "volunteered" to help fix the damage caused by the recent storms. Thanks guys! I hope you get released soon.

Janet, John and Lorri are taking a break from our arduous hike up the canyon. Since there was so much water in the creek, the normal easy trail was not accessible so we had to take the alternate route.

Here is John taking a photo of the raging waters while trying not to fall into them.

At the end of the trail, or at least the end of the trail as far as we were concerned, there is a palm tree oasis. We couldn't quite get right up to them because we didn't want to go swimming or rock climbing.

Thanks to J&J, we found a great place to set up camp near the ends of the dirt road that leads to Glorietta Canyon. We parked the vans sort of back to back and set up the grill, later to become the fire pit, in between.

I think this was taken the next morning. We had a nice log fire in the Weber Kettle the night before. I shut the air vents on it when we went to bed and it was still plenty hot enough to cook our breakfast sausage in the morning!

This is another view of our Thursday night camping spot. There was not a soul in sight besides us and the birds and the lizards... you get the picture... it was quiet and secluded.

I climbed up on a nearby rock to get this photo. I'm guessing that we were two or three miles off the paved road but the dirt road was smooth and easily accessible. No 4WD required.

Here we have some, er, yellow buttercups? I don't remember their names. I know I should have written them down but I was having a tough enough time trying to get my camera to work. The lens cover had broken earlier.

Hey here are some more of those buttercups along with some other purple buds. Help me Janet! What are these things?

Unfortunately these are the only photos I have of this trip. My broken camera was just shipped off to Olympus for repairs and the memory card which refused to divulge any more of the photos I took is now being interrogated and perhaps tortured in an effort to get it to reveal where it has hidden the remaining images.