Cottonwood Canyon
Cottonwood Canyon is a lesser-known wildflower area southeast of the Carrizo Plain. Our plan was to check it out in the morning and then return to Carrizo for the afternoon. The forecast called for an overcast day, but when we got up, the sun was shining and the clouds were more like a thin veil that filtered the sun. We felt like we got the gift of an extra day of good shooting.
When we reached Cottonwood Canyon, we had the area to ourselves. We saw more flowers on a previous trip, but this year the wildflowers were all at the beginning of their blooms. The wildflowers were blooming in small groups and were just beginning to open fully. That made the flowers stand out more and made them easier to photograph.
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| Cottonwood Canyon | Tidy Tips & Owls Clover | Cream Cup | Daisy |
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| Owls Clover | Cottonwood Canyon Road | Cottonwood Canyon Road |
We took a break and enjoyed our gourmet peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. We finished exploring and photographing the main canyon area around the stream and decided we were ready to call it a day. It was late afternoon, and we weren't up to starting a whole new area of the Carrizo Plain. On the way out of Cottonwood Canyon, we stopped at the top of the plateau and hiked to a high point where we could shoot across the daisies with the Temblor Range in the distant background. Even the clouds cooperated. It turned out to be one of our better landscape shots of the trip.
We returned to Roots for dinner with our appetites all ready for ribs. But before we could order, the order taker told us they were out of ribs. No ribs? How can that be? Someone had come in and bought nine racks of ribs earlier in the evening, and they didn't have any ribs left. That's not nine orders of ribs. It was nine racks of ribs. It must have been one big party. We had to "settle" for pulled pork and tri-tip.
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