Monday, December 19, 2011

A Trip To See The Elephants Knees

Sunday morning the wind had stopped blowing so we decided to take a trip to see the rock formations known as Elephants Knees. The Elephants Knees along with the Wind Cave  are at south east corner of Anza Borrego State Park. To get there you have to drive past the town of Ocotillo Well which is the site of a large area for off road vehicles, there are hundreds of RVs parked  in the  desert. When we went by there were a few ATVS on the hills.

To get to the Elephant Knees you drive through Split Mountain Canyon.

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The canyon is narrow in parts with a strange mixture of rocks formed by earthquakesIMG_3120IMG_3121                                                                                                                                 We saw the Wind Caves in the distance but decided to walk to the Elephant Knees first.

To get close we had to walk up a very muddy wash.

 

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There has been quite a bit of rain in the last week and it was really hard walking.

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Louie did a nose plant

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We  got as close as we could

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There are so many spectacular rock formations in the Anza Borrego, and the Elephant Knees are certainly one of them.

By the time we had hiked back down to the car it was spitting rain and  we were all pretty muddy, Skip and I couldn’t get the mud off our sneakers, it was like glue. We decided  to put off climbing up to the wind tunnels for another time

The wind tunnels in the distance.

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Today was sunny and pretty warm, we had to take the motor home in to town to get water and propane and to dump our tanks.

Our Christmas Tree

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Jean

3 comments:

  1. Haven't been up close to the Elephant's Knees but have seen and taken some nice pics of them from the wind tunnel location. That whole area is so cool and you get some really nice views from the wind tunnels of the surrounding area including the Elephant's Knees. Sure know what you mean by that gumbo mud sticking to everything in great glueable globs.

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  2. nice day for a hike..too bad about the 'rain' though!!..Merry Christmas to you both!!

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  3. Looks like you had quite the day.

    Feliz Navidad!

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