Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/19/super-bloom-creates-new-califo.html
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(shoves SXSW tourists into the boarding tube)…“enjoy the coast!”
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this kinda reminds me of something I observed having lived in both a small rural town and then new york city… specifically how overcrowded it felt. and how exhausting that is. whether it be trying to go to a restaurant or a city park or even a day trip to pick apples a couple hours from the city. Just too many people everywhere.
Maybe that’s just obvious but it’s really something you don’t experience at all growing up in a place like Iowa. Everything feels more apocalyptic in a city. Like you’re living on the tipping point of destruction. I sometimes think that’s why people in urban areas are more likely to demand governmental solutions to things like climate change and poverty, while people in rural America can just act like those things don’t exist.
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Sounds wonderful. I’ll be sure to avoid it.
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Between Houston to Austin there’s a stretch of highway that gets really beautiful wild flower blooms (blue and also red flowers) and holy crap do people go bananas. Over the weekend on my way to Houston i noticed someone pulled over to take pics of their significant other and their dogs in the flowers… while their car was partially blocking the fast lane on a stretch of highway. Ugh.
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I would be happy if SXSW was held in the middle of a desert instead of downtown. Fuck this traffic.
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Plenty of evidence of humans acting like assholes, like everywhere on the planet.
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I was just thinking yesterday of the paradox that in order to preserve the Arctic for as long as possible, I’ll probably never travel to see it. Ditto the wildflowers…if I love them so much I guess I will have to leave them alone. BTW, most of Silicon Valley used to blossom like this in spring, when it was still called the Santa Clara Valley.
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I’ve been to this “spring bloom” in Death Valley on another banner year. It’s kind of like going to New Orleans during Mardi Gras, it seems like such a good idea until you get there and realize you’re part of an unwelcome invading army. And of course the whole “super bloom” description is highly relative, there’s lots of flowers for a desert, but it’s still a desert and even during a “super bloom” there’s a much lower density of flowers than, say, your average city park.
Which reminds me, what ever happened to seed bombs? For creating super blooms close to home.
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Skip Lake Elsinore, check out Anza Borrego and stay in Julian, pie capital of California. There are also some decent wineries down thataways.
Um… At least the drought is “over” ?
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We avoided the Lake Elsinore situation, and went to the Antelope Valley Poppy Preserve instead. Yes, there was a lot of traffic getting into the parking lot, and yes, the port-a-potties were being used faster than they could be maintained. But once you got onto the trails, it was wonderful! And, yes, lots of people. Only two, a father and son (well, an older man and a teenage boy) left the trail, walked on the flowers, took a picture, then came back to the trail… to be soundly berated. They sulked, but that’s it. All in all, a great experience.
I’ve long admired the online native plant resources of the Lady Bird Wildflower Center, which also has a visitor center:
The reddish flowers in your photo are of course Indian paintbrush, which are pretty alongside the bluebonnets, but the way they’re interspersed is a tipoff to theIndian paintbrush being a partial root parasite on other plants. They dont kill the other plant, just siphon off some water and nutrients:https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/Castilleja-coccinea.shtml
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Natural disasters are getting weird. Now we have to worry about devastating levels of beauty.
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The poppy bloom used to be a big tourist attraction in LA - people would take the Mt. Lowe trolley up to the top of Lake Avenue, where the gentle alluvial slopes of Altadena were carpeted with miles of poppies. Then they’d pose for pictures and send postcards to the relatives back home.
These days, the gentle alluvial slopes of Altadena are covered with subdivisions, and the Mt.Lowe trolley is long gone, so Angelenos and tourists must trek off to less-developed areas like Lake Elsinore and the Mojave desert.
Nothing new about ‘tourism overflow’ here in California. (-:
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