Anza-Borrego: California's Largest State Park

The Other Side of San Diego County

We headed south to see my parents in San Diego and took them on a three-day getaway for their two firsts: an RV experience and a trip to the desert. What better place to take them than the second largest State Park in the US: Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, on the eastern side of San Diego County.



Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

Named after 1) Juan Bautista de Anza, a Spanish explorer who forayed against Native Americans (“Look, new territory! Let’s chase after the original non-white inhabitants and claim this land as our own!”) during his exhibition in the western US and 2) the Spanish name “Borrego”, or Bighorn Sheep, one of present-day's four-footed inhabitants of the area.

This rich wilderness provides visitors with an opportunity to experience the wonders of the California desert.



Before Juan Bautista “JB” de Anza, the first European to establish an overland route from Mexico (through the Sonoran Desert) to the Pacific coast of California, the new world explorers had been tormented seeking such a route for - drum roll, please - more than two centuries!!! So here’s to you, JB, for discovering and blazing that trail with missions and presidios and paving the way to the establishment of several towns and cities such as Tucson, Monterey, San Francisco and San Jose.

Mimicking his famous call, "¡Vayan subiendo!" ("Everyone mount up!") as we tour this fantastic (may I mention delightfully cold - as you can see from our wardrobe) desert state park.




Fox Vs. Cacti

Unfortunately, the more imminent dangers of the desert is not obvious to everyone, especially our dog Fox. He had a disastrous encounter with a certain extra-spindly succulent, and struggling to remove it from his leg, he got it on the outside of his mouth causing him to stumble backwards and sit on even more cactus! YOUCH! The poor dog yelped in pain and shock, and the next four hours of that night were spent with my dad, mom, Chris and myself removing stickers and spindles from Fox, finding them amongst thick fur, and trying to subdue and pacify a confused/hostile spike-infused dog.

Needless (or is that 'needles'?) to say, our dinner barbecue that night turned out to be a barb-rescue! LOL. Okay, I should totally get someone else to write for me. During all this, our cat Spencer cautiously watched from a distance, but later on was his usual, calm and affectionate self.



Fox recovered more quickly than the rest of us and is doing very well. Up to now, I still have memorabilia on my arm of that thorny episode.

Click here or the pictures above
to see the rest of the photos on Flickr.

Subscribe now if you haven't yet. Click the button above and enter your email address, then check your email for a confirmation. You only need to do it once and it's FREE!

All photos copyright 2007 J. Reque and C. Foley.
Traveling12Feet.com

HAPPY GOBBLE-GOBBLE!!!

Our wonderful Photo Banner is now up and running at Traveling12Feet.com!!!

For those of you who are receiving our updates through email, take some time when you can to visit the site, see our new logo and play with the photos. You can click the banner to change the photo on top of the blog page. The photo above is a small sample of the banner.

This has been an eventful and adventurous year for us, and we'd like to thank you - our family and close friends - for all the love and support you share. As far as the site is concerned, we have received several offers from other companies to advertise with us (they put their ads on our blog page), but we've decided to keep this site as simple and uncluttered, especially with ads. Our way of assuring you that we try our best to keep information private (such as email addresses for example) and focus on sharing our life events with you, our family and friends, rather than aiming to acquire more outside hits. Of course, visitors are always welcome, and we invite "passers-by" to look around and get to know us, as well as interact and leave comments.

We hit the road again for the deserts of Southern California this Saturday, and getting the RV ready for its nearly one-month adventure, but in the meantime, we'll be enjoying the company of friends to celebrate some turkey-turkey!

From Chris, Rikki, Fox and Spencer - HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Subscribe now if you haven't yet. Click the button above and enter your email address, then check your email for a confirmation. You only need to do it once and it's FREE!

Updates From Your Traveling 12 Feet

Over the weekend we had the great opportunity to meet 2 of my most favorite photographers: Jim Zuckerman and Bruce Dale, in a 2-day digital photography seminar in San Jose. Naturally, all 12 feet were there since we decided to bring the RV with Fox and Spencer instead of staying at a hotel.

Again, being able to simply grab your car-house and pick a place to stay (...hmm. Or "park") in where you have the convenience (and comfort!) of home (no need to pack, even!) and at the same time travel with your pets, beats searching for the lowest priced hotel in the area. (Take that, Expedia!)

The Outdoor Photography Seminar was a success, and we picked up a lot of good tips. The best part of course was interacting with these renowned photographers personally. Jim Zuckerman (left photo) almost became a doctor, but chose to be a photographer instead. He never regret it one bit. I admire him for his bravery and his adventurousness. Bruce Dale, a National Geographic photographer for 30 years, is daring, resourceful, and very imaginative and lots of fun! Both of them have been to the Philippines and have told me a little bit about their experiences there.

Jim signed my book, and Bruce signed a special magazine that I'm giving as a gift to my brother in the Philippines. I also got Bruce to take a snapshot of us - cool huh? One of the world's internationally recognized photographer actually held my pocket camera and took a photo of him next to me! "Mr. Dale, you're my idol", I said. "Wow", he said. "What did I do?" he followed jokingly. Cheers to you, Mr. Dale. Thanks to you both for the inspiration and all the valuable knowledge you've shared with us.

In lieu of the subject, we will be posting different photos/panoramas of our trips in the title header of our blog page. The header will also be clad with our BRAND NEW SPANKING LOGO!!! (Did you know that "Traveling 12 Feet" is now an official business???) Here's the fun part: you get to randomly rotate these images when you click it! So watch out for this upcoming photo feature! (Here's a 'little' teaser of what it looks like - with incomplete logo elements)


Finally we head back to Emeryville, and after putting the RV in storage, we drove in the Xterra very excited and looking forward to the next trip -- our fall travel/vacation starts next week!!! We are heading down south to Death Valley and Saline Valley, also to make a side trip to see my parents in San Diego, and possibly Anza Borrego, the Salton Sea, and/or the Joshua Tree National Park. We can't wait, it's just a few days away!!! We will update you guys as much as possible, but in the meantime, take a look at how we travel in the Xterra: