On Highway 78, I watched the valleys awaken in vibrant blooms — a dramatic springtime show

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In aboriginal spring, the California upland municipality of Julian sits suspended betwixt seasons. At much than 4,000 feet, up successful the Cuyamaca Mountains, it rests among coastal unrecorded oak woodlands and Coulter conifer forests. Snow sometimes dusts the surrounding slopes, melting by day into damp world arsenic manzanita and upland lilac statesman to flower. Along Main Street, the mingled scents of woodsmoke and pome pastry drift from storefronts.

It is present that my travel on State Route 78 begins, pursuing its agelong eastward descent from the upland wood into the stark badlands of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, past skirting the confederate borderline of the Salton Sea, crossing the Algodones Dunes and continuing toward the Colorado River — a 140-mile corridor spanning 1 of the astir melodramatic ecological transitions crossed nationalist lands successful the American Southwest.

This roadworthy travel continues a bid exploring California’s overlooked scenic highways, inspired successful portion by creator Earl Thollander’s “Back Roads of California,” whose sketches and question notes celebrated a slower mode of seeing. After tracing Highway 127 on the borderline of Death Valley, the travel present shifts south.

Julian Cafe and Bakery, the commencement of the travel disconnected Route 78.

Within minutes of leaving town, the pavement twists downward done choky turns and steep grades arsenic the upland aerial begins to warm, the vegetation giving mode to chaparral and scattered juniper, past to the stark silhouettes of ocotillo and Mojave yucca. By the clip it reaches the Pacific Crest Trail crossing 12 miles eastbound of Julian, travelers person already descended astir 2,000 feet.

Here, the road passes softly into Anza-Borrego, homeland of the Kumeyaay, Cahuilla and Cupeño peoples. At astir 650,000 acres — conscionable smaller than Yosemite — the parkland unfolds arsenic a immense mosaic of mountains, badlands and unfastened godforsaken valleys extending acold beyond the scope of the pavement.

Bri Fordem, enforcement manager of the Anza-Borrego Foundation, said the scenery reveals itself dilatory to first-time visitors. “I deliberation a batch of radical thrust close by it and go, ‘Oh yeah, there’s a godforsaken there,’” she said. “But erstwhile you halt and you spell a small slower and instrumentality a person look, a full satellite opens up.”

That invitation begins astatine mile 18, wherever the Yaqui Pass Road turnoff leads northeast toward the godforsaken basin and the gateway assemblage of Borrego Springs. The 2.8-mile Borrego Palm Canyon Trail offers 1 of the park’s astir accessible routes into the desert’s interior. Cholla gardens and brittlebush emergence from airy alluvial slopes, and a seasonal watercourse leads to 1 of California’s fewer autochthonal instrumentality thenar oases.

In bedewed winters, the valleys beyond municipality awaken successful colour arsenic soil verbena, godforsaken sunflower, evening primrose and pincushion stitchery successful brief, luminous blooms crossed the godforsaken floor. The Anza-Borrego Foundation tracks these seasonal displays and offers guidance connected however to witnesser them responsibly.

The abbreviated detour returns to Highway 78 on Borrego Springs Road, wherever the pavement drops abruptly done the Texas Dip adjacent mile 27 — a stark, cinematic lavation wherever scenes from the closing series of “One Battle After Another” were filmed. Wandering done the wash, the caput drifts not to the movie but to the flash floods that determination done this transmission aft dense rains, abrupt torrents cutting and reshaping the vale level successful a substance of hours.

Ocotillo plants emergence up from the godforsaken level successful Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

The prima hangs successful the mediate of the entity arsenic I thrust toward 1 of the astir rapidly changing shorelines successful California. From astir immoderate vantage point, the Salton Sea appears lifeless — a grey expanse rimmed with brackish and windblown dust. But astatine its confederate terminus, that content begins to shift. The basin gathers into shallow wetlands wherever question returns to the landscape.

Sixty miles from Julian, I crook onto Bannister Road and bump northbound on a gravel way for 3 miles into the basin, to a parking batch 164 feet beneath oversea level. The batch sits wrong Unit 1 of the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge. A abbreviated locomotion on an irrigation canal leads to a weathered reflection platform rising 2 stories supra a patchwork of saturated flats wherever saltgrass, iodine bush and cattail instrumentality root. Here, the Pacific Flyway compresses into a surviving mosaic of wings, h2o and soil. Each spring, hundreds of thousands of birds stitchery present to provender and remainder earlier lifting northbound again, pursuing migratory paths acold older than the farms and highways that present specify the valley.

The wetlands adjacent the Salton Sea supply a captious situation for food and birds.

The spot overwhelms the senses: a lavation of emerald against unfastened sky, thousands of snowfall geese honking successful chorus, orange-crowned warblers and Abert’s towhees singing successful the trees, and the persistent tang of brackish successful the air.

I conscionable 3 birders lasting softly connected the platform, scanning the skyline done binoculars and recounting the 73 avian taxon they had tallied implicit the past 2 days — burrowing owls, American avocets, sandhill cranes and black-necked stilts among them. For 30 minutes we ticker a bluish harrier connected the hunt, dive-bombing blue-winged and cinnamon teal, though helium ever comes up empty. Between scans of the horizon, we enslaved implicit “Listers,” the 2025 documentary that turns obsessive birdwatching into some drama and a communicative of devotion.

A burrowing owl stands successful the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge.

Leaving the refuge, the vibrant colour palette and moisture springiness mode to muted browns and the returning austerity of godforsaken air. By mile 97, the roadworthy rises to the Hugh T. Osborne Overlook, wherever the scenery shifts erstwhile again, opening into a immense water of sand.

The Algodones Dunes agelong toward the skyline successful pale, wind-sculpted ridges, a constrictive ribbon of shifting terrain moving southbound into Mexico. The road passes straight done their center.

From the overlook, the roadworthy reads arsenic a enactment dividing 2 expressions of the aforesaid dune system. To the southbound prevarication the Bureau of Land Management’s Imperial Sand Dunes, wherever dune buggies and motorcycles hint arcs crossed bare slopes. North of the pavement, the North Algodones Dunes Wilderness holds a quieter terrain, wherever sunflower, ephedra and chromatic mesquite anchor the soil successful subtle defiance of the wind.

A idiosyncratic walks on the Algodones Dunes.

Here the roadworthy becomes a bound betwixt antithetic ways of moving done — and loving — the aforesaid landscape: velocity and stillness, sound and silence, crowds and solitude.

By precocious afternoon, the last miles transportation maine eastbound toward the Colorado River, wherever it meanders past willow and cottonwood. The airy softened toward sunset, an evening echo of the aforesaid violet entity that hovered implicit Julian astatine the commencement of the day. After 140 miles, my roadworthy travel had travel to an end. Yet arsenic I pitched my structure that night, the question of the landscapes lingered successful mind.

The Colorado continued its agelong people south. Snow geese lifted northbound from refuge marshes. Wind reshaped the dunes, erasing the day’s tracks. Wildflowers that had concisely lit the godforsaken level would soon slice arsenic vigor gathered strength. The roadworthy ended, but the surviving systems it crossed moved steadily onward, already turning toward the adjacent season.

Road travel planner: State Route 78

The route: Julian to Palo Verde.

Distance: 140 miles (one way).

Drive time: 3 hours consecutive through; let a afloat time for stops.

Best clip to go: October done April. Summer temperatures often transcend 110 degrees.

Fuel and essentials:

Julian (Mile 0): Gas station, Julian Market and Deli, tons of restaurants.
Borrego Springs (Mile 18): Gas station, groceries, cafes.
Brawley (Mile 74): Gas station, restaurants.

Eat and drink:

Julian Cafe and Bakery (Julian): Apple pie.
Pablitos Mexican Bar and Grill (Borrego Springs): Warm chips, fantabulous salsa.
Brownie’s Diner (Brawley): Old schoolhouse diner. Good breakfast.

Camping:

Tamarisk Grove Campground: Oct. 1 to April 30. 27 sites.
Borrego Palm Canyon Campground: Oct. 1 to April 30. 120 sites.

Lodging:

Julian Gold Rush Hotel: Vintage charm, escaped breakfast.
Borrego Valley Inn: Adults only, pool, blistery tub.

Hike and explore:

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Borrego Palm Canyon Trail
Cactus Loop Trail
Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge
North Algodones Wilderness Area
Imperial Sand Dunes
Oxbow Recreation and Wildlife Area

Safety notes:

Water: Carry astatine slightest 1 gallon per idiosyncratic per day.
Connectivity: Cell work is dependable on the route.
Wildlife: Watch for bighorn sheep and coyotes connected the road, particularly astatine dawn and dusk.

Wildflowers on Highway 78.

(Josh Jackson)