Paly Days, Starry Nights

BORREGO SPRINGS, Calif. — It’s hard to imagine a more spectacular way of getting your first glimpse of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park than by swooping down out of the clouds in a power dive, leaving behind the piney plateau of the Cleveland National Forest as you descend 3,200 feet to the dry sandy plain of the desert. Best of all, you don’t even need to charter a plane. You get the same adrenaline rush driving a dusty Ford Explorer, as my wife and I often do, leaving Interstate 15 at Temecula and winding through the mountains on California 79 through Warner Springs. From there, you take the S-2 turnoff to S-22, a Mobius strip of two-lane blacktop that makes a breathtaking zigzag plunge into Borrego Springs, a town surrounded entirely by California’s largest state park.

Our destination was the Palms at Indian Head, a hotel on the grounds of what was once a chic 1950s-era Hollywood getaway known as the old Hoberg Resort. Surrounded by California and Mexican fan palms, the recently refurbished hotel is nestled at the foot of Indian Head mountain, looking east across the desert floor toward the Salton Sea. The hotel has 10 cozy, informal guest rooms, all with splendid views, and the recently opened Krazy Coyote Saloon and Grille is a culinary delight in a town that is far from a gourmet heaven. Although each room at the Palms has a TV, we left our set off, preferring to rummage through a basketful of board games. The theme continues downstairs, where the dining tables are equipped with a stack of Trivial Pursuit cards.

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Our first morning, Sonja and I had a hearty complimentary breakfast: buckwheat pancakes with a fruit compote, yogurt and granola, a fruit cup (made with locally grown citrus) and fresh grapefruit juice. (Citrus is Borrego Springs’ specialty crop, and you can buy a big sack of sweet pink grapefruit at the front desk to remind you of the desert when you return home.) A stroll around the reception and breakfast rooms offered a glimpse of the Palms’ glitzy past, with period photos of Hollywood-royalty visitors such as Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Paul Newman. But that stroll was just a warm-up for the real reason we were here--Anza-Borrego’s spectacular array of hiking trails.

We began with a jaunt up Alcoholic Pass. Don’t ask--nobody seems to know how it got such a colorful name. The trail marker is right out of town north on Coyote Canyon road, past miles of citrus groves. Drive slowly; most of Borrego’s roads are just dirt tracks, though easily navigated in good weather by a regular car. The 3.4-mile round-trip trail passes through a veritable forest of ocotillo and cholla cactus, which should be in bloom through May.

To fortify ourselves for a more ambitious hike, we stopped in town at the Coffee and Book Store for lemonade, Mountain Dew and sandwiches. My wife, being five months pregnant at the time, and constantly ravenous, ordered the Baja, which had generous helpings of roast beef, jack cheese and green chiles, on a tasty bolillo roll.

We drove south through Yaqui Pass to Scissors Crossing, and south to Blair Valley, home to many early settlers in this area. One of the most colorful was poet Marshal South, a Depression-era dropout who brought his family to live on a remote mountaintop in a house they built by hand. The remains are still there, and we made the steep hike up to the homestead.

On our second day out, we stopped at the town’s corner grocery for sandwich fixings. As far as shopping goes, Borrego Springs is a mighty poor relation to Palm Springs, which is just the way we like it. One of the prime commercial locations in town is occupied by an abandoned driving range that’s a dead-ringer for the one Kevin Costner runs in the movie “Tin Cup.” If you don’t want to eat out at one of several country clubs for dinner, there are a few alternatives in town. Our favorite is D & E’s Renaissance Italia, a funky checkered-tablecloth Italian restaurant with cheerful murals painted on a Quonset hut left over from the time of Gen. George S. Patton. The unusually large men’s room out back was allegedly his headquarters.

After shopping, we took a leisurely morning drive through the park’s various geologic zones, which include everything from craggy, striated badlands to slot canyons that look like miniature Grand Canyons, except that you can touch both opposite walls with extended arms. Every hike offers a glimpse of the effects of titanic natural forces, especially when you have to scramble around a huge clump of boulders torn from cliffs by flash floods. You also feel the history of the West. We crisscrossed the Butterfield Overland Stage Route, which once led pioneers and gamblers across the desert to the coast.

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We ended up 52 miles south of Borrego Springs on Highway S-2, turning off onto a bumpy side road that led to the Mountain Palm Springs Campground. Our destination was the string of palm oases tucked into the canyons of the Tierra Blanca Mountains known as the Mountain Palm Springs loop.

The trail ran up a barren wash, first past the Pygmy Grove, a few dusty trees that barely seemed to eke out an existence in the barren landscape. But around a wide corner we suddenly found ourselves in the Southwest Grove, where a year-round spring nurtures a lush ecosystem. We heard birds singing, insects buzzing and the whisper of the native fan palms that grow so close together that we felt obligated to stretch out and relax in the dense cool shade by pools of gurgling water. The loop led to the Palm Bowl Grove, a stand of palms arrayed in a formal semi-circle looking for all the world like an orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl.

A terrific end-of-the-day excursion is to go out to Font’s Point, a high promontory overlooking the Borrego Badlands. As the sun sets, the colors of the badlands deepen and the stars come out. That’s when most people leave, but we bring our 8-inch telescope and spend several hours taking advantage of the unusually dark skies.

On our most recent trip, we were rewarded with the sight of Canopus, the second brightest star in the sky. A rare sight from North American latitudes, it’s visible here only because of the flat horizon to the south. It was dark enough to see the Andromeda Galaxy and Perseus’ Double Cluster with the naked eye, as well as a number of deep sky objects that showed up especially sharp in our scope, thanks to the crisp desert air.

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Budget for Two

Gas: $58.00

Palms at Indian Head, 2 nights: $258.70

State park admission: $5.00

Dinners: $81.45

Lunch, trail sandwiches: $36.00

Hiking guide: $16.95

FINAL TAB: $456.10

The Palms at Indian Head, 2220 Hoberg Road, Borrego Springs, CA 92004; tel. (760) 767-7788. Recorded park information and wildflower hotline; tel. (760) 767-4684.