Sadly, this all started as a good-hearted fraternity prank.
This is at the entrance to some golf course. It wasn't possible, from where we were and with the police officer standing a few feet away, to really get an angle that showed the water rushing past near the road.
This is a holding-the-camera-out-of-the-car-window shot of the "Old Front Street" sign in Temecula. The area is like an old west town, except they take credit cards.
Snow-capped mountain, way off in the distance.
View from the car.
A considerable pile of rocks.
Hint for driving and photographing simultaneously: driving takes precedence.
Nature plays Jenga.
All day long, we had these great views of layer upon layer of mountain. We tried to photograph it many times, but it just doesn't really translate, This is the best we did.
"Sleeping Unconscious Quadriplegic Hibernating Turtle Mountain 2"
The original "Sleeping Unconscious Quadriplegic Hibernating Turtle Mountain"
Skye standing next to the most atrocious piece of art ever created.
Organized, plotted, perfect trail with well-placed informational signs. We avoided this.
This is a map of the Anza-Borrego Desert area. Where would we go? Would we jump over to Pupfish Pond? Of course not!
It's to Hellhole Canyon for us!
As we begin our journey to Hellhole Canyon, we see what looks like a well-worn trail and immediately ignore it.
Skye busily avoiding cacti.
Hiding behind the patch in the middle of the photo are two animals which we're pretty sure should be called "Donkalopes." They were probably just big rabbits.
On the path to Hellhole Canyon. Somehow, this looked altogether too pretty for the name.
Continuing in our efforts to catalog and name all the plant species we could find: The Mythical Q-Tip Tree.
Desert Toilet Brush Broccoli.
The famed Brillo Bush.
This thing's just crazy. That's good enough for us. Let's call it the Desert Spaz.
We call this "Desert Fireworks."
An incredibly vague sign. It's kind of like the terror alert system. Be vigilant!
As you'll later see, it was probably warning us about ourselves.
No, it's even prettier.
Somewhere near "Hellhole Canyon," if our $7.50 Xeroxed map is to be believed.
We took this photo to showcase the needles on these bastards, which we both got to feel stabbed into our legs.
We're dumb. This happened to both of us. It's impressive both pain-wise and in how nature's nasty little plan works.
See, they're a team: the mountains and hills distract you while the cactus attacks.
This RV is called the Vixen. After our hike, we found this very exciting.
So exciting we photographed it as if we were selling it on AutoTrader.
Each colored dot represents a cow. Wait -- it *is* a cow.
The lush, green desert.
This was the end of this particular road for the Matrix. We didn't have the clearance. A few trips ago, we would've tried anyway, but the flooding and all made us a little more cautious. In other words, this was one of those times we decided against doing the stupid thing, which is very hard for us to do.