This past weekend we journeyed to the far northeast to see the poppies at the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve.We went three years ago and it was absolutely magnificent! There were beautiful rolling hills covered with orange, yellow, purple and blue, like some enormous Impressionist canvas.

This year, we drove up on Saturday and spent the day at the poppy festival in Lancaster. It has a very hometown feel, with lots of arts & crafts booths, local automobile hobbyists showing off their tricked out cars, a mini zoo of animal exhibits – one owl, one vulture, one turtle, some lizards, some snakes – and a sort of renaissance faire except it had a Roman army camp along with the usual renaissance sword fighting and the like. We stuck mostly with the arts & crafts, checking out the various wares and buying a few things (we bought a funky sign for the hot tub that reads, “we don’t skinny dip, we chunky dunk”) and generally enjoying the day. They had a bunch of food booths too, tailored for the budding diabetic in us all. There were funnel cakes, cheese steaks, brat dogs, and the piece de resistance – fried Twinkies! I had only heard tell of this delicacy, so was quite fascinated to watch the process. They had a huge vat of hot oil and when someone ordered a fried Twinkie, the poor Twinkie was opened, dipped in a big bowl of batter and stuck in the hot oil. After some seconds in the oil out it came looking like a horrible mutant Twinkie, quite misshapen and lumpy. They put it in a little hotdog-type holder, then covered it in whipped cream, chocolate syrup and sprinkles, stuck a spoon in it and handed it over to the lucky buyer. Three bucks they charged for this grotesque treat. I got sucked into the pet stuff, and Chuck was fascinated by the prevalence of PVC marshmallow shooters (really blowers, as you filled the PVC pipe with little marshmallows then blew on one end to fire the marshmallows – more like marshmallow poison dart shooters) and PVC bows and arrows (well, the bows were made of PVC, and you conveniently stored the arrows in the ends of the PVC bow). As a guy who has a lot of PVC pipe lying around, he was pretty amazed by what they were charging for this stuff. All in all, it was a fun day at the festival. The downside to the day was the weather – it was quite windy and cool. This caused us some concern, as poppies are sensitive flowers – when the wind blows and the sun isn’t out, the little guys retreat from the world, close up tight and wait for better weather.

We spent the night in Lake Elizabeth, a very cool community about half an hour away from Lancaster up in the high desert (altitude 3500 feet). We had an adventure run in the morning when we attempted to run around Lake Elizabeth. According to Google Maps it was 3.36 miles around – in real world numbers it took us 5 miles to bushwhack through the brush and swamp grass. I creeped myself out thinking about mountain lions potentially stalking us from the ridges overlooking the lake. The wind wasn’t too bad but it was pretty cold, which made us ponder what things would be like out at the poppy reserve. We headed out about noon for the reserve. I remember back in March 0f 2003 that as we drove up, the poppies were everywhere, lining the road and filling the fields in the miles before we entered the reserve. This year, we were met with miles of fields of green and brown, and the wind was picking up, too. We parked and got out of the car and were met with a gale-like wind that made it hard to open the car doors. As we headed into the fields, it was like we were in a completely different place. The trails were the same, but that was it. There were no poppies anywhere. As we walked, bundled in jackets and scarves, heads tucked down to break the wind, we realized that there were poppies out there, just in very small numbers and all closed against the wind and the cold. The goldfield was out in quantity, as was the lupine but hardly a poppy could be found. We hiked around for about 45 minutes before deciding it was too cold and windy to keep looking for the elusive poppy. I caught the sound of the wind in a short movie. Warning: listening may make you want to put on a jacket.

Here are images of the poppy festival and the poppy reserve. When we got back to Long Beach, we noticed that about two blocks from our house, there are a whole bunch of wild poppies happily blooming.

So it goes.