After our month-long stay in Yuma Arizona, Bill and I were ready to move on and see some new sights. While the weather in Yuma was pretty spectacular and the amenities of our RV resort were wonderful, we were definitely itching to get back on the road. We headed to Ramona, California, a smallish town nestled in the hills and mountains about an hour east of San Diego. We scheduled a 2 week stay and were hoping that there would be enough to keep us busy for the time that we were there. Bill and I were not disappointed, in fact, we are already counting on a time to return. Even the weather cooperated with nearly 2 weeks of cloudless skies and warm temperatures.
Much to our delight, we encountered a relatively newish wine AVA with really fun opportunities to taste wine, learn more about this wine region and meet wine-makers/owners as we sampled the different wines from the grapes grown here. There is a separate blog entry so I’ll say no more about that except we are returning home with 3 more cases of wine than we started out with.
The area itself is largely rural, encompassing desert terrain, mountains, and foothills with picturesque small towns dotted all over the place. It had a little bit of everything with gorgeous scenery in every direction. We spent a bit of time hiking in the Anza-Borrego State Park that is enormous at over 660,000 acres. Depending on the elevation and which area of the park and time of day, we were hiking in, it could be less than 60 degrees or 80+ degrees. I had a bag of clothing in the car that had extra sweatshirts, a couple of fleeces and extra water…just in case. My favorite, fun hike was “The Slot”, a very scenic slot canyon that prompted many extra photos on my camera.
One of the things we have missed over the past year is visiting museums and visitor centers and Anza-Borrego offered an outdoor option for us. A local artist, Ricardo Breceda, specializing in sculptures of creatures that once inhabited this area, composed over 130+ metal sculptures that have been placed in various areas of the park. There were a couple concentrations of them near Borrego Springs and we spent several hours touring them. They are huge and pretty amazing as you can see in the photos.
We also hiked in Cuyamaca State Park as well as the Cleveland National Forest, both of which are large and cover different terrain than Anza Borrego. I think we barely scratched the surface of the hundreds of miles of hiking trails between these three parks.
In addition to Ramona there a number of small towns dotting the area that we drove through almost daily on our way to the parks including Saint Ysobel, Julian, and Borrego Springs. Who knew that apples grew well in this region…so of course we had to sample the apple turnovers at our favorite local bakery, Dudley’s in St Ysobel. I do believe that we returned 3 times for our “treat” as well as picking up delicious loaves of fresh bread. Bill and I loved our Mexican dinner in Julian (albeit a bit chilly outside on their patio) and picked up fresh eggs and fruit at one of the many local produce stands. Delish!
Bill had done a bit of research before we headed to Ramona, but this stay surpassed our expectations and gave us some surprises, as well! We look forward to returning to this area for more exploring in the future!
