Armchair Travel: Antelope Valley, California

Among my closest family, friends, and colleagues, I'm a bit notorious for my rather intense distaste for all things California.  The funny thing was, this wasn't something that sprung up after I moved away; California and I always had a less-than-perfect relationship, from the very beginning. Well, time and distance have blunted some of my unhappier memories, to the point where I'm almost ready to go back for a visit, and I'm certainly open to taking a trip down memory lane every now and then. Fortunately, during my almost-decade there I did manage to tamp down my disdain enough to occasionally go forth and explore some of the many, many rather awesome things that California had on offer.

Today, April 6, is designated as California Poppy Day, in honor of the California State Flower, which is (gasp!) the poppy--specifically, the Eschscholzia californica, the California Poppy. In honor of this rather whackadoodle holiday, I decided to sit down and blog a bit about the time I had the opportunity to frolic about in literal vast fields of these rather lovely little flowers. 

While I reckon you can find the California poppy in lots and lots of parts of the state, there's this one area which is rather famous for its concentration: the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. It's located in the middle of fuckin' nowhere, in northern Los Angeles County (hard to think that anyplace out in Southern California could be considered the middle of nowhere, but really, it's a damned big state.) It's rather a desolate bit of the region, save for when the poppies are in bloom. And not every year is a good bloom season--it depends on the when and the how much rain that falls in a given year. So, while strolling the poppy fields of California had been on my bucket list for many years, it wasn't until the spring of 2014 that an opportunity of good timing enabled me to explore them. 

My travel companions (my was-band, and a couple of our housemates) and I ventured out on Easter Sunday, and after a lot of driving, we got to the nowhere place of all the poppies. (Hey, I think that should be the new name for the nature preserve! or at least the title of an epic poem.) To be honest, I'm not even sure we made it into the proper preserve; there were so many fields blanketed in the orange-gold blooms, we just stopped and strolled wherever the was-band deemed photogenic enough. 

The region we explored...it was vast. Huge. Big sky, big fields. We rarely encountered other folks. Only sheep.

Given the mercurial nature of the bloom season, if you live far away, it can be difficult to time your visit so that you can get the full poppy experience. Now that I live far away, I reckon it's unlikely that I'll have a chance to return, at least in this lifetime. There are always more places to travel to, after all. But if you can find a way, do try to explore these vast fields and their blooms.