Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Van-Essa Road trip March 2019….Part 1: Walker Canyon… Super Bloom (Super Busy)…


In March 2018 my wife booked a three day weekend for us in the Sprinter camper van that I’ve been drooling over for since 2017. It’s a custom build by VanCraft that looks to fit all my wanderlust requirements and she booked it on Outdoorsy. I was hooked then and my wife and I pulled the trigger and purchased a newly converted VanCraft adventure van in October (2018). They completed the conversion and handed off the keys in early December.


Our friends at Seven Seas Roasting Company in South Park (San Diego, CA) planned their grand opening on 3/16 and my wife and I planned to attend. We figured we’d stop off at few spots along the way and just make it a big adventure day (and we did).

My friend just went to the Walker Canyon the weekend before and said the super Bloom is really something you should see at least once in your lifetime- so we added that to the list. I did some research online and found a spot south of Walker Canyon in Pala called Oceanview Mines were you collect crystals and gems so I reserved us a spot there too. Plus we had the grand opening at Seven Seas so I figured that was probably enough planned stuff and we could figure out stuff to do in between if we extra time on our hands.  

Friday we loaded up the van with supplies (food, snacks water, extra clothes etc) and planned for an early start Saturday morning. We got on the road at 6:30 am and headed east then south on the 15. We arrived at the exit on Lake st near Lake Elsinore and it was already backed it on the freeway. We exited anyway and couldn’t turn left at the bottom, the Cops had it blocked off and there were people everywhere walking towards the super bloom mountains there that were covered in orange poppy flowers. It looked like a black Friday sale and there were way too many people for my comfort, so my wife and I agreed to get back on the freeway and head farther south and hopefully find a less busy area (and we did).



Just a little way down the freeway we took another exit, turned left wand made our wanderlust way thru a small city surrounded by flowers canyons. I saw a promising spot that was hiding behind a gas station so we eventually made our way there after driving around till the landscape started to change. We parked at the gas station and hiked up a very steep cement rain gutter. And found an empty area where we could literally stop and smell the flowers.




After taking in the view and taking a few pictures we hiked back to our van and headed south again. And on towards our next destination of the day- Oceanview Mines. (Read all about it here in Part #2)

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