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Our route home from Death Valley National Park went right through
Red Rock Canyon State Park on highway 14.
In past years, we had seen many nice flowers here in April.
From the highway, we could see no color and I thought we were too
early this year.
But we needed a break anyway, so we pulled off at the main entrance
(signed for the campground) and parked immediately at the entrance
to Hagan Canyon and then hiked the nature trail.
After a few minutes, we started to see patches of intense magenta and
yellow from low growing flowers and I ran back to the car to get my
camera. There were occasional flowers here and there to the "top of
the loop" in the nature trail. Here we left the trail and continued
up the wash to the head of the canyon. Among the eroded white
and red rocks, we found large fields of desert sunflowers and finally,
right at the pass, big swaths of blue phlox mixed with yellow desert
dandelions. These lovely flowers were quite a surprise.
Heading back to the car, the other half of the nature loop ran by
several joshua trees that were in full bloom, with dainty desert
dandelions at their feet.
All in all, this was a very worthwhile stop, yet nothing was
visible from the highway.
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Inch high Bigelow's monkey flower along trail
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Blue phlox highlights the red cliffs
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Desert gold sunflowers
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Desert gold sunflowers at head of Hagan Cyn
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Desert gold sunflowers
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Karen admires the blue phlox on saddle at head of Hagan Cyn
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Blue phlox and yellow desert dandelions at head of Hagan Cyn
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Desert dandelions and joshua trees along the nature trail
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Desert dandelions
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Joshua tree blooms
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