Let's talk about a really quirky little town that should be on your to do list.

Borrego Springs is a lot of things. It's a tiny speck of a town about 3 hours east into the desert from San Diego. It sits in the heart of the Anzo Borrego National Park. This is the largest desert state park in America, clocking in at just over 600,000 acres. In fact, it's so big that it is the second largest park in the contiguous United States, coming in second to the Adirondack National Park in upstate New York. To get to Borrego Springs, you just drive from San Diego until you literally are surrounded by nothing for a good long time and then you drive further. If you didn't know it was there, if you weren't looking for it, you might never find it.

However Borrego Springs and it's surrounding areas have a few traits that make it quirky, and honestly a place to find. First up, and my personal favorite, is that it's California's first international dark sky city. This dark sky community is one of only about eight communities in the world that boast the designation. It means that they protect a valuable natural resource, the night sky, from light pollution; protecting it so that you can see the Milky Way and millions of stars. I first discovered this community when looking for an off the beaten path thing to do for my husband for his birthday. This is about as off the path as you can get. There is a retired astronomer that lives out there and hosts night sky tours with some pretty hefty equipment. The night we went out there we were able to see Saturn and its rings, several satellites, the Milky Way and a host of other really neat things... So I'm going to preface these pictures by saying none of them are mine. These all came from searching for Borrego night sky tours which is the name of the tour company. My camera is far too crappy to have ever caught something this spectacular. However, having done this tour myself, I can say this is what it looked like.

The next thing that makes this town so cool is the super blooms that happen in the spring when there's good rain in California. This community is known for its millions of desert blooms that happen in the springtime somewhere between mid March and mid April in years of California gets a good drenching. And while that happens less and less nowadays, a few years back they had such a massive super bloom that the town was not able to handle the influx of Los Angeleans that came on the weekends. The police department along with the Anzo Borrego Park rangers called a press conference and asked people to stop coming. Good news though, even if you don't get there that specific month or even time it right so that you miss the specific weekend that everything happens to open up, as long as it's been a good rainy winter, you're pretty much guaranteed to see some beautiful blooms along the way. It might not look quite like these pictures, but it's still really pretty nonetheless.

To really appreciate how small this place is you have to understand that it has about 3,500 residents year-round. There are plenty that come in the spring and take up temporary residence, but at the beginning I described it as a tiny speck of a town. It really is. There are no traffic lights, hardly a road sign, and only one small traffic circle in the center of town common named Christmas circle. It got its name from the birth of Salvador Ignacio Linares on Christmas Eve in 1775. For those are familiar with Palm Springs, this is what Palm Springs might have felt like 70 years ago. Super charming with Adobe style homes painted in pastel and desert colors. To really appreciate this, the last time I was there we stopped in The Restaurant. That was its name. There were other little places to eat for sure, but it was still photo worthy nonetheless.

One of the coolest things about this little town is it's kind of funky little art community. Beginning in the early 2000s, Borrego Springs became a haven for artists when the art institute opened. Since then, it's become the hub of the art community in the town-- offering classes, tours, shows and an art park with a community garden. Surrounding the town though, and probably the most famous, is a series of permanent metal art installations by artist Richard Breceda. There are some 130 metal sculptures in the desert surrounding the town across several locations. Everything from a scorpion, an elephant and the giant serpent to a man and his horse and wild mustangs. It's the proverbial icing on the cake for this unique little oasis in the middle of hundreds of miles of desert.

But we're not quite done....Borrego Springs sits about 30 miles from the Salton Sea. If you don't know about this body of water, it's checkered and interesting history is itself a draw. But that coupled with its current state is definitely worth a look see. So this body of water is completely man-made and runs from Imperial county all the way down to Mexico and empties out into the Gulf of California.

Beginning around 1900, an irrigation canal was dug from the Colorado River to provide Imperial valley farmers water. The head gates and canals suffered a buildup of silt which affected water flow. They chose to do the fast workaround which was cut into the banks on either side to increase the size of the irrigation canal. And I'm pretty sure you know what comes next-- the new water pressure was so significant that it broke the head gates. It took two years after that of water flowing from the Colorado into the Salton basin for them to fix it. By the time it was done, there was a new 15 x 35 mile lake.

Now because it's such a hot area, that would have dried up in the matter of a few years but the farmers kept using the water from the Colorado River for irrigation and let the overflow spill into the Salton Sea via the canal. And that brought with it a whole lot of pesticides and toxic chemicals. But before people became aware that those toxic chemicals weren't good for you, a whole host of resort towns sprung up in the desert around the sea hoping to be the next Palm Springs. It began to draw a huge amounts of wildlife, in particular birds as they stopped in their migration routes along the Great Pacific flyway. Because this became a huge stop for birds, though, the powers that be decided to stock the sea with all kinds of fish. Beginning in the '70s scientists started to sound the alarms that the combination of the toxic chemicals and the increasing salinity from the continued dehydration and evaporation that happened every year would make this an inhospitable landscape for wildlife. Less than 10 years later, by the mid eighties, the continued runoff from the farms created a perfect scenario for a host of wildlife diseases to come to its shores. Following that, it was only a hop skip and a jump to the massive avian die offs, and the increasing salinity meant massive fish kills.

Most of all of this meant that the towns dried up and became ghost towns, but a few diehards held out. And in 1999, due to the extreme weather and massive dehydration, the winds began to stir up huge amounts of dust from the exposed lake beds, which now were horrifically toxic due to the runoff that had been left unchecked for the last 100 years. With that, the rest of the towns folded and those that still live immediately adjacent to the Salton Sea report much higher levels of asthma and respiratory issues, much like the big dust clouds created in Bakersfield, CA.

But that's just the background to what is now one of the quirkiest urban exploration spots you will find in Southern California. California sports a lot of ghost towns, most in the desert and holdovers from the Gold Rush in the mid 1800s. This one is unique in that it is relatively new, these towns didn't spring up until the '50s and '60s and then were just as quickly abandoned by the early 2000s. That, coupled with the "beaches" along its' shore, make for a surreal, albeit eerie experience. Standing on the shores of the Salton Sea, it quickly becomes apparent that you're not standing on sand. The beach is completely made up of a 100 years of fish and bird bones. It's wild. Scooping up a handful you'll see small eroded bones and nothing but. As you move closer to the water, the bones get bigger.

I cannot stress enough how much this town and its surrounding area needs to be on your list for a weekend. It's a cool little getaway with lots of photo opportunities. Happy exploring!