Anza Borrego Desert State Park

We moved a little bit South to visit the town of Borrego Springs and Anza Borrego Desert State Park. The Park is the largest state park in California and the second only to New York’s Adirondack State Park in the entire United States. The Park is primarily comprised of the section of the Colorado Desert that exists in California. It is immense!

We found out that the name of the Park is historic. In the late 1700’s, Juan Bautista de Anza, one of the more known Spanish explorers, toured this valley many times on his explorations of the central and northern California regions. We also learned that Borrego is Spanish for lamb, as in the lamb of a Big Horn Sheep, one of the more prolific species in the area. We haven’t spotted any yet on our wanderings, but we are holing out hope!

Because the Woman is broken, we are not sure how much hiking we will be getting in, but we did manage to get in some really good lookin around in the Borrego Springs area. Back in the mid-1990’s, a wealthy Californian Dennis Avery was buying up depressed real estate in the wake of the savings and loan crash. He did not particularly desire a bunch of desert, but he was offered a deal he couldn’t pass up, and acquired a contiguous 3 square miles of land in Borrego Springs.

One day when he was trying to decide what to do with this land, he spotted a 30 foot tall metal Tyrannosaurus Rex leaning over a fence along I-215 outside of Riverside California. He got off the freeway and discovered Perris Jurassic Park – part welding shop, part sculpture garden, owned by Ricardo Breceda. Breceda was an artist, particularly a metal sculptor, who was obsessed with dinosaurs. After many discussions, Avery agreed to commission Breceda to create dinosaur art to be placed on the land owned by Avery in Borrego Springs.

What started out as a project with promise was soon out of control. Avery found that the art on his land did nothing to hurt the prospect of development and ultimate profit from his investment. Breceda who had begun creating creatures whose fossils have actually been discovered in the valley, moved on to other creatures who are home in the area, to mythical creatures, to other whimsical creations, all with a very distinct creative flair.

We ended up spending a couple of days killing two birds with one stone. We roamed the Borrego Springs suburbs searching for these spectacular pieces of art. As geocaching enthusiasts tend to gravitate to this kind of attraction, we found that there were many caches that had been hidden in these pieces of art – bonus! Art hunting and geocaching all in one fell swoop!

We thoroughly enjoyed our couple of days of jointly hunting art and caches. We now understand that there are well over 300 pieces of metal art in the Borrego Springs valley, and we believe we have seen them all. If you ever get near this area, it is well worth the visit.

Talk to you soon!