March 27, 2019
The Bloom
Here in sunny Southern California it’s been raining, in fact it’s been raining quite a bit. Here, in Beautiful Downtown Glendale, we’ve received 19 inches of rain since the beginning of 2019, that’s quite a bit for us. When we get rain, the little seeds in our hillsides, those hillsides that the rain didn’t wash into the Pacific, turn into flowers. Billions of flowers. This happens though out the region(the desert, the coastal hills and inland hills). In some areas The Bloom is pretty spectacular, one of these areas is near Lancaster north of Los Angeles and is the home of the State Poppy Park(the California Poppy is the state flower). another is the hills along I-15(or as we call it, The 15) north of Lake Elsinore in inland Riverside County.
The plan for this trip was a visit to Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside and then a drive over to The 15 and a brief stop at The Bloom and finally a stop at a Hindu temple along The 71. Time permitting, I was also thinking of also stopping at a Buddhist temple(it’s the one that Al Gore visited in 2000). It turns out that seeing The Bloom was a bit more time consumming(getting off the freeway took about 20 minutes) and there was a hike up a hill involved, so the temples were deferred to another day.
Read MoreHere in sunny Southern California it’s been raining, in fact it’s been raining quite a bit. Here, in Beautiful Downtown Glendale, we’ve received 19 inches of rain since the beginning of 2019, that’s quite a bit for us. When we get rain, the little seeds in our hillsides, those hillsides that the rain didn’t wash into the Pacific, turn into flowers. Billions of flowers. This happens though out the region(the desert, the coastal hills and inland hills). In some areas The Bloom is pretty spectacular, one of these areas is near Lancaster north of Los Angeles and is the home of the State Poppy Park(the California Poppy is the state flower). another is the hills along I-15(or as we call it, The 15) north of Lake Elsinore in inland Riverside County.
The plan for this trip was a visit to Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside and then a drive over to The 15 and a brief stop at The Bloom and finally a stop at a Hindu temple along The 71. Time permitting, I was also thinking of also stopping at a Buddhist temple(it’s the one that Al Gore visited in 2000). It turns out that seeing The Bloom was a bit more time consumming(getting off the freeway took about 20 minutes) and there was a hike up a hill involved, so the temples were deferred to another day.
Bloom Panorama
While you can see some of The Bloom from the freeway and the side road next to the freeway(that’s where they have you park), to really experience The Bloom you have to hike up one of the two trails at either end of the road. I elected to take the trail to the south(it turns out that the trails loop back, but it’s a several mile hike). The orange flowers are the aforementioned California Poppy, the yellow is Wild Mustard(yes, the wild mustard is not a myth) and any purple is probably lupines. They had a chart at the trailhead with pictures of all the various flowers that you’d see.
