Every year I’ve missed the wild California poppy bloom that happens each spring in the high desert. Either I’m too busy studying for exams or I’m too lazy to make the hour and a half drive up to see them or I forget until it’s too late. Last Friday I was talking to a friend over a lunch about how my usual weekend routine does not involve doing anything terribly interesting. So, this weekend I resolved to change that. When I was thinking about possible things I could do, I remembered that it was poppy season and verified on the website for the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve that the poppy bloom was currently at its peak.

So, I and my companion left for the poppy reserve located several miles west of Lancaster Sunday morning excited and hoping to see carpets of orange scattered on the gently rolling hills of the high desert. There were poppies blooming around the entrance of the park and I couldn’t wait to pay the $7 entrance fee and hike the looping trails to see lots of flowers… Well, flowers we did see, but just not many of those flowers were poppies. The few poppies we did see were suspiciously clustered near the trails where visitors walked. I almost wonder if the park officials just strategically scattered seeds near the entrance and next to the trails to draw people in and collect their money and make them think there was something really spectacular there. I don’t know what happened; it was the peak of the bloom, but the display was rather anemic. Maybe there wasn’t enough rain this year or maybe some other condition just wasn’t right this year.

I was disappointed about the lack of poppies, but I still enjoyed the hike on a pleasant day in the desert. It was a little windy, but the temperature was very mild. We still saw lots of flowers in bloom. We saw lots of clusters of goldfields (which look like tiny yellow sunflowers) and these bulky purple flowers called owl’s clover (the tips of which supposedly look like two eyes and and a beak…um… maybe). It was also interesting to hear the sound of the wind in the grass, sort of like a waterfall but not really. I don’t know how to describe it… There’s actually a lot of beauty in the desert, and it was nice to take some time to admire it while leaving the city behind for a while.

And, I did finally get to see a good poppy bloom albeit not within the boundaries of the poppy reserve. I shot the attached photo along the side of a road near Lake Elizabeth. It was definitely worth the drive, and hopefully next year or sometime else in the future, I’ll get to see a more glorious bloom…