A National Monument That No One Knows

It's been a long time since I went on a road trip. Which is why I decided to go to the Carrizo Plain National Monument the other day. Sure, it's only a four-hour drive to get there and it was a one-day deal so it hardly counts as a road trip, but nonetheless.

The drive through the Grapevine to the San Joaquin Valley is not a particularly exciting one. However, the season happens to be just right for wildflowers, and we were greeted by a carpet of them as we got to the other side of the mountains.

Eventually we left the interstate for State Highway 58. This passes through the town of Buttonwillow, which has a racetrack but otherwise looks like a small pueblo in rural Mexico.

The highway then passes through some lovely green hills, although I suspect they are brown and boring for most of the year. On the north coast of California, for instance, the hills are green year-round because it rains. Here, they're probably green between January and April.

As the road climbs into the hills, it just gets better and better. Excellent scenery combined with fun, tight corners mixed with fast sweepers.

Past the summit, the scenery opens up to reveal huge blankets of flowers on the hills. It's amazing to see that there is more yellow than green here. It's probably like this for two weeks to a month, tops.

Descend from the hills and arrive at the edge of the Carrizo Plain, the largest single native grassland remaining in California. Perhaps people from Kansas would think nothing of this. However, I am not from Kansas.
Here, the road is mostly straight and driving slightly too fast over some of the steeper crests results in, well, fun.

Soda Lake Road is the main road that bisects the park. It is paved part of the way, but then turns into gravel. However, it is one of the smoothest gravel roads I've ever driven on; there are few ruts and the gravel is mostly firm. This means it is very easy to navigate, even at speeds close to tarmac. This may or may not have resulted in me going sideways on a bit of a chicane.

Throughout the park, there are huge expanses of wildflowers but I'm not sure about the point of visiting during any other time of the year. Sadly, there were no animals to be seen. There were very few people to be seen as well, which was quite pleasant given the roads.

Past the park, the road climbs into subalpine forests and then out to US-101 in Ventura. The remainder of the trip is not much to talk about.