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Amboy Crater in Wildflowers

February 16, 2016 by Lee Leave a Comment

A superbloom in 2007 gave Amboy’s stark lava field a palette like no other desert landscape

Trail to the crater
Trail to the crater

Never underestimate a volcano.

Amboy Crater rises some 250 feet above the desert floor, punctuating the surrounding vista with some hundreds of lesser ancient volcanic cones varying in depth from a few feet to twenty feet.  All taken, this mottled volcanic topography radiates away from the central ancient cone anywhere between one to five miles and resembling from the air a vast complex of sand traps strewn across a giant golf course of lava bed fairways.  

A paved parking area (see map below) to access Amboy Crater by foot lay about miles due west of the little town of Amboy along historic Route 66.  From the parking area, it is an easy one mile hike southwesterly on a well-curated path along natural ground to the base of the ancient volcanic cone.  The trail leads around to the west side of the cone, where the eroded remains of the lava outfall of ten thousand years ago provides for an ascent along a well-worn trail some 100 feet vertically to the volcano’s heart above.

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Other desert visits

Bisnaga WashTHE WINTER BEAUTY OF ANZA-BORREGO
A great place to visit n Anza-Borrego State Park  in the winter months is Bisnaga Wash, flowing down from Whale Peak under the crisp, clear skies of the southeastern area of the park.  Soaring hawks, the edges of storms collapsing at the rain shadow, and ebullient rainbows disappearing into the blue sky.

Bisnaga is an Americanism for the Spanish Biznaga, which refers to tall barrel cactus.

AMBOY CRATER IN WILDFLOWERS
A volcano flowing with neon green floats on a sea of  yellow desert sunflowers. A season of spectacular rains may come only every five to eight years in the Southwest, producing prodigious blooms that bring sightseers from around the world and their insect pollinators from seemingly out of nowhere.

Amboy Crater was featured in a Huell Howser California Gold episode about Amboy in 1993 and the volcano itself came to life as a set location for the 1959 movie Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Female Phaianopepla guards nestTHE BUSY LIFE OF BOX CANYON
The little narrow canyon  was in the 1840s the best route into San Diego from Arizona and Texas, and still showcases the Mormon Battalion hand-built road which became the route of the Butterfield Stage line.  The stage route can be easily seen today, struggling between the narrowing canyon walls as it makes its way into Blair Valley and once-upon-a-time all the way to Los Angeles.

Somehow, an abundance of wildlife and color have been left behind, and thrive after 175 years, for time has not diminished the richness of the environs here, as they were for San Diego’s early settlers, which include an unusual density of barrel cactii, birds and and buzzing pollinators among a diverse garden of flowering plants and juniper trees.

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“The scenic and solitary Amboy Crater was a popular sight and stop for travelers on U.S. Route 66 in California before the opening of Interstate 40 in 1973. Other than a stretch of U.S. Route 66 in New Mexico, Amboy Crater was one of few extinct volcanoes along the entire route, so generations of U.S. Route 66 travelers from the 1920s through the 1960s could boast that they had climbed a real volcano. Visits decreased after Interstate 40 opened, but have increased in recent years with the nearby Mitchell Caverns, Mojave National Preserve, and renewed historical tourism interest in ‘Old Route 66.'”   Wikipedia

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