For many years I've wanted to see the southern desert in bloom. This year, family business took me to San Diego at the end of March. Every day for weeks before this trip, I watched desertusa.com, a favorite website, to check the status of this year's wildflower display. It just got better and better as my departure day approached.

I packed my bags for house cleaning, visiting customers, backpacking, partygoing and hoped I had the right wardrobe for the week. As it turned out the only thing I didn't use in my stash was rain pants and a swimsuit. Water just didn't figure prominently in my desert adventure, it seems but being a Northwester I just can't go anywhere without my rain gear.

Three days were spent with my sister, cleaning out decades of dust and a lifetime of collecting. Aunt Kit had passed away at the respectable age of ninety-six and left a final joke for my sister, the task of dealing with her home. I helped as best I could, sifting through dust and paper day after day.

Afterwards, I rented a cute butter yellow PT Cruiser which I christened "Daffodil" and headed east for Anza-Borrego State Park. The universe conspired to thwart my plans. The days we spent at Aunt Kit's house were hot, hot, hot, just the thing that desert wildflowers hate. Adding insult to injury, a huge hatch of sphynx moth caterpillars munched any remaining green bits, pretty much ending the bloom display for 2008. Then Daffodil presented me with a very flat tire. Of course she waited to do this until I was way out in the desert, miles and miles from the nearest service station of any kind.

With the aid of strangers, I got the silly little compact spare on the car and backtracked fifteen miles to the nearest outpost of civilization. There I learned that the tire was permanently flat, unrepairable. This sent me twenty-two more miles back in the direction I had already come to a place where they actually sold tires.

By late afternoon I was finally back at Anza-Borrego and headed for Blair Valley. There I was able to visit a couple of ancient Indian village sites. I lugged my backpack gear to the second spot, pitched my tent, boiled water and watched the sun set all alone in the desert. WooHoo! I had finally succeeded in camping solo, just me, the coyotes and the ghosts of ancient people.

The next morning I headed south to hike some of the palm canyons that are found here. It looks so alien compared to what I'm used to seeing in Oregon. The meaning of oasis became abundantly clear: shelter from the blazing sun, a spot of green, deep shade and pools of water. Plump dragonflies darted here and there. The trail started out wide, sandy and totally obvious but soon petered out into the occasional cairn and a rock scramble up and over a steep saddle. I feared getting lost but managed to make my way back to my car by hiking a loop from one canyon to the next.

That night was spent on a windy, and I mean WINDY, mountain ridge. This was the homesite of Marshal South and his family during the thirties and forties, sort of back-to-the-land experiment. He and his wife raised three children on this waterless ridge, supporting the family by writing magazine articles about their experiment in living. If the wind was often like the night I spent there, they must have all been crazy. It howled and blew. I feared my glasses would blow off my face and my little tent would be ripped to shreds but the only casualty of the night was my sleep.

Luckily, neither caterpillars nor hot weather discourage cactus when they want to bloom. I saw lots and lots of wonderful color adorning the hillsides and trails. Flat places free of thorny things, good for pitching a tent were amazingly easy to find. Folks were friendly, producing a floor jack and changing a flat for me. All and all, this was a great trip. The only thing lacking was the carpet of wildflowers in tall green grass I had come to see. OH! and a donkey-goat sighting. Maybe next year...