A Walk Among Giants

 

Just a couple miles west of Aguanga, CA and Jojoba Hills, on the north side of Hwy 79, sits a huge field of metal sculptures, home of Ricardo Breceda’s collection. Breceda is the artist whose famous sculptures dot the landscape around Borrego Springs. While it’s more impressive to see them scattered about the desert, seeing so many in one place is pretty amazing.

I’m posting way too many photos but they are all so unique I couldn’t decide which to leave out.

All of the above and more are for sale. Just call the phone number on a sign that says someone is only two miles away who will come and help. They would make for some pretty eye-catching lawn ornaments, don’t you think?

On Saturday we moved out of the boondock area at Jojoba Hills into a lovely site while the owners are away. Laurelee and her sweet dog Libby are here, too, and stopped by while taking a walk.

We’ll be here until Thursday enjoying the view, playing pickleball, hanging at the pool, visiting with friends, and taking one last hike in Anza Borrego. A very nice neighbor down the street supplied us with grapefruit and oranges from her trees, and even loaned us her golf cart to use for a couple days while she was gone.

We also went to Best Buy the other day and bought a new computer to replace the Surface we took back. Although we would have rather purchased one from Costco they did not have what we were looking for. We ended up getting this Lenovo Yoga, and although the Best Buy site now says it’s $569, when we bought it a few days ago it was only $499 in the store. So far we like it even better than the Surface so we’re hoping it holds up. We don’t have much faith in computers these days.

Suicide Rock and Catching Up

 

After a couple days of fun in the sun in San Diego we came back to Jojoba Hills and have decided to spend a little more time here even though our computer issue has hopefully been resolved.

We left Suzanne in San Diego, and Mark and Bobbie were melting from the heat, so they moved on to greener pastures. Hated for our little gang to break up but we sure enjoyed meeting up and hope to do so again soon.

We’ve played pickle ball with Terry and LuAnn once more, then the next day joined the group of regulars who play in the mornings. We didn’t do too badly for beginners, and it brought back good memories of our 20 years of playing racquetball. We’ll probably be out there again tomorrow. Jim also changed the oil on both the car and Lazy Daze. Nice to have a place to get things done.

Elvis relaxing on the dash.

The latest news is that on Monday we received an email from Microsoft with a tracking number for the replacement Surface. Apparently Jim’s buddies at the customer service center were unable to get the order canceled, but by this time we had already decided we did not want another one. Jim called FedEx (it was being overnighted, much to our surprise), and they were able to intercept it and put a refusal on it, so it is now on its way back to Memphis where it was shipped from. The service from FedEx was so much better than Microsoft.

Sophie’s new resting place, under my pillow. She is such a fool.

Since we needed to find a place to dump the used oil, and I was in need of a hike, we decided to take a drive to Idyllwild yesterday in the San Jacinto Mountains where we found an auto repair shop to recycle our oil and the Deer Springs trail to Suicide Rock just a mile north of town. You have to get a free Wilderness Permit at the Idyllwild Ranger Station just off SR 243 at 54270 Pine Crest Road. There is a self-issue permit station on the porch and they only give out a certain number per day, but on Tuesday we only saw a few people out on the trail. Being an hour or so from the Palm Springs area the weekends are probably very crowded.

Although the trail guide said it was 3.3 miles to Suicide Rock, our devices showed closer to 4 miles, and it sure felt that long. It probably had something to do with the fact that we started at 5,600’ and climbed to 7,400’, and we’re not used to hiking at that elevation.

At the lower elevations the forest was thick with manzanitas.

A taste of views to come.

It’s a long last mile to Suicide Rock.

This downed tree was an obstacle on the trail, and not easy to climb over as the circumference of the trunk was huge.

There was one creek crossing with what looked like sudsy water. Not sure what that was about but it made for an interesting photo.

We began encountering quite a bit of snow on the trail as we got higher.

Across the way Tahquitz Peak is the highest point. I can’t believe we actually made it up there last year with Suzanne.

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We actually stood on the deck of this fire tower. If you’re interested you can read about it here. Although about the same distance it involves even more climbing but the views are better.

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Trudging through more snow on the last difficult quarter mile of the trail.

Almost there.

Suicide Rock is a huge rock outcropping and the official end of the trail.

It got its name from a local legend of two Cahuilla Indian lovers who threw themselves off the rock rather than be separated by the tribal chief’s orders. Now that’s love!

Looking down on the rustic, touristy town of Idyllwild, CA.

Coming  back down was easy and fast, as it was all downhill. Jim says he wouldn’t want to do this trail again, but as tough as it was I would definitely go back. Maybe not for a few days, though, as my legs are really feeling it today. Hope we can do at least one more hike while we’re here.

We’ve really been enjoying our stay at Jojoba Hills and are considering putting our names on the waiting list for a site. After 7 1/2 years of travel Jim is getting tired of moving around so much and it would be nice to have a place we could come to whenever we want and could stay as long as long as we like. It’s a big decision that we aren’t taking lightly, and we’re considering other alternatives, too. The way we are at making decisions these days we will most likely end up doing nothing! We’ll see…