Jan 29 Mountain Springs

Jan 25

We hiked up to a Palm Grove just before Torote Bowl, about 2hours.

Jan 26

Hiked to Bow Willow camp site and back. Took us a bit longer than it should have as about a mile up we missed a turn and the wash brought us back to the start of our hike. Altogether we hiked for about 3½ hours. We don’t have any cell service at this site so in the afternoon we drove down the highway until we got a few bars and stopped on the side of the road and sent out some messages to let everyone know we were all well.

In the area of the park that we are hiking there are what they call washes where over the thousands of years of earth quakes and other events valleys are formed between the peaks. When they had rains and flooding the water from the mountains would all fun into the valleys between the peaks and flow to the bottom. These became known as washes. In some of these washes there are springs, even well up in elevation. Where ever these springs occur a grove of fan palms grows. This is also where the animals come to drink. In this area there are cougars, bob cats, coyotes, which we hear at night as well as small heard of mountain sheep. We have searched daily for them but haven't seen any yet. Anza-borrega in Spanish for mountain sheep

in urban areas the dead leaves are all removed from the palms t make them look nice but in the wild it is a bit unusual to see the dead branches fall of naturally. It is a natural habitat for birds rodents etc