DryStoneGarden

BahiaAsuncionPanorama

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We spent the bulk of our Baja trip in a fishing town called Bahia Asuncion about halfway down the peninsula on the Pacific Coast. The town itself is somewhat drab and utilitarian rather than charming, but the landscape around it is fascinating. It’s incredibly austere — none of the plants are over waist high, they’re widely spaced, and none of them had foliage while we were there — and I was at first a little unsure about the place as a vacation destination. But it grew on me, as desert landscapes tend to do, and the beaches are fantastic, endless and empty of other people. I made about a dozen watercolors while I was there, doing the sketch on site during the day and then adding color during the evening.

I also made two watercolors of the central desert we drove through to get there, Ocotillos, Cardons, and Boojums in the boulder gardens.

And I did three watercolors of the missions. One of an Elephant Tree at Mission Mulege.

And two at Mission San Ignacio.

Death Valley and the ‘super bloom’ was just one stop on the trip, we spent the bulk of our time south of the border in Baja. We revisited Cerro San Ignacio, an amazing spot that deserves an interpretive trail perhaps more than any other site in the world. But we’d been there once before; the botanical highlight of this trip was the Boojums. Boojums! I’d wanted to see the boojum forests for years.

We did our boojum viewing amongst the boulder gardens around the oasis town Cataviña, a beautiful area with pinkish granular granite reminiscent of the rock at Joshua Tree (there’s apparently good climbing on some of it, too). Some of the boojums had strange curlicues at the top like something out of Dr. Seuss, but my favorites were the graceful upright ones. There’s something illogical about them, as if the plant got confused and put it’s taproot in the air and it’s branches underground.

The area also has tremendous Cardón cactus trees.

Elephant trees are another favorite. A little bit like small oaks from a distance, but with striking caudiciform trunks up close.

As with any great rock garden, in some places the plants were a compliment to the rocks and in other places the rocks were a compliment to the plants.

There were plenty of showy flowers tucked amongst the rocks and arroyos. A few of my favorites are below. (more…)