Carrizo Plain National Monument in eastern San Luis Obispo County is one of California's most iconic wildflower viewing areas, but is this year's display worth the 150-mile trip from Los Angeles?
If you are looking for brightly colored blankets that cover the hills, the answer is no.
But if you want a beautiful excursion with unlimited sky, close bird encounters, indigenous and geological history and rolling waves of grass dotted with specks of gold, purple and orange, then definitely yes, but wait a good week or more for muddy roads. become passable again.
In early March, a friend and I planned our visit for April 14, largely because the rainy season usually ends in late March, peak flowering is usually in early April, and given the cool temperatures of This spring, we thought the weather would have warmed by then to encourage a good display. But the first two weeks of April brought plenty of cold rain to much of central and southern California, and during our visit, temperatures hovered around 50 degrees and the rain waxed and waned between hopeful moments of blue sky followed by black clouds. and water falling on curtains.
The best display of wildflowers was in a large 2019 photo of goldfields carpeting a valley hanging in the bathroom of the Cuyama Buckhorn restaurant in New Cuyama.
(Jeanette Marantos/Los Angeles Times)
Truth be told, the best display of wildflowers we saw during our visit was a 2019 photo in the bathroom of the Cuyama Buckhorn restaurant in New Cuyama: a stunning view of the California goldfields (Lasthenia californica) They grew so vast on the Carrizo Plain during a super bloom that they looked like a golden carpet stretching for miles.
Truth be told, the best wildflower display we saw during our visit was a 2019 photo in the bathroom of the Cuyama Buckhorn restaurant.
We saw swaths of goldfields during our soggy trip, along with armies of soggy brown tumbleweeds and pockets of other wildflowers, like purple owl's clover. (Castilleja exserta), which are actually violets; common yellow and white tidy tips (Layia platyglosa); and (rarely) California poppy (Eschscholzia californica). But the standout color was the bright green of the California hills after a rainy spring.
The tall grass was thick and wavy, like wind on water, and often burst with birds that flew past our car and sometimes left us behind because Soda Lake Road, the only paved road, was full of potholes and deep puddles. worrying.
A super bloom? Not then and probably not this year, according to rangers at the Goodwin Educational Center in Carrizo Plain. The sign behind the counter told the story. The last three superbloom years, when wildflowers bloomed so densely that they formed quilts of color over the hills, were in 2017, 2019 and 2023, rangers said, when rains in the region from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, respectively, they had been 12.29 inches, 16.31 inches and 15.32 inches. So far, rainfall for water year 2024 is less than 10 inches (including unseasonable rain that fell on April 14) and no more rain is expected this season.
The sign at the Guy L. Goodwin Education Center shows that precipitation in the Carrizo Plain this year has been less than in previous years with “superflowers” carpeting the hills.
(Jeanette Marantos/Los Angeles Times)
The Carrizo Plain super bloom on April 16, 2017.
(Raúl Roa / Los Angeles Times)
Scenes from Carrizo Plain on April 14, 2024 during a tour of the paved portion of Soda Lake Road in Carrizo Plain National Monument in San Luis Obispo County. Today, the plain is mostly grassland, with sporadic color.
(Jeanette Marantos/Los Angeles Times)
The Carrizo Plain stretches 50 miles between the Temblor and Caliente Mountains, a grassy plain and drainage basin where the Chumash, Yokuts, and other indigenous peoples hunted and traded before settlers tried their hand at dryland agriculture. . There are some campsites, trails, and unpaved roads, but no services (like gas, water, food, and usually cell phones). According to the brochure, temperatures often exceed 100 degrees in summer and drop to zero degrees in winter. All roads except one, Soda Lake Road, off Highway 58, are unpaved, and even Soda Lake Road becomes a bumpy, unpaved road five miles south of the Goodwin Education Center, which has restrooms and picnic tables, plus books, gifts and displays.
In addition to bird watching, camping, hiking, and wildflower viewing, you can hike along the San Andreas Fault on the Wallace Creek Trail, stroll along a platform trail along Soda Lake, which becomes a “ dry salt-encrusted basin during the dry season,” according to See the brochure and study the pictographs left by native people at Painted Rock, which this time of year can only be visited with ranger guides on Saturdays (reservations required) .
It poured with rain much of the day and the unpaved roads were mostly impassable, except for a short path to the visitor center.
(Jeanette Marantos/Los Angeles Times)
But on Sunday we couldn't do any of that because the muddy, unpaved roads were so impassable that even the cranes were getting stuck, according to the rangers. Every few minutes, someone would come downtown and ask the same question: Is it safe to continue driving south on Soda Lake Road once the pavement ends? And each time, the rangers patiently responded that they would definitely not recommend any of the unpaved roads for two-wheel drive cars, or even four-wheel drive SUVs, unless they had enough free space, nerves of steel and enough money. to pay for a tow truck.
The few who braved the back roads drove muscular vehicles that looked like they had been carelessly dipped in chocolate. While my friend and I were debating what to do, we talked to two people who had made the trip. They had a sort of hysterical look on their faces and emphatically told us not to try it, even though my Toyota Highlander SUV has four-wheel drive. “I can not believe us I made it,” said a wide-eyed woman in a large pickup truck halfway up the windshield with mud. “You never cross.”
A few brave souls were walking in the rain on the platform trail along Soda Lake, but the small parking area had so many ruts and mud puddles that we decided to avoid that too, so as not to get stuck. Instead, I sullenly drove back north to California 58, even though hate retreating and heading east. Our mood quickly improved along this spectacular, winding road through what looked like the green, tree-lined Shire from the Lord of the Rings.
The Cuyama Buckhorn Restaurant in New Cuyama. Order the Smoked Oyster Mushroom Tacos and check out the bathroom for a gorgeous superbloom photo from 2019.
(Jeanette Marantos/Los Angeles Times)
After our beautiful drive south on 58, we turned west on California 33 near McKittrick, and within a few miles we entered a hellish landscape of swinging oil pumps and acres of power poles and wires between Derby Acres and Taft. Our destination was New Cuyama for a late lunch and early dinner at the Cuyama Buckhorn Restaurant on California 166, which runs along the western edge of the Carrizo Plain. I highly recommend this restaurant, which despite its small-town location has a sophisticated and upscale bar, wine list and menu (the smoked oyster mushroom tacos with tender blue corn tortillas, made in-house, are to die for. to die for), along with a remodeled hotel.
And when we finished, the clouds were parting, thankfully, because our final stretch took us west through the Los Padres National Forest on California 33, a scenic but winding road where previous rain had washed out several places, so we had We have to stop frequently to wait for a green light to travel in single lanes. The going was beautiful but slow and a little eerie as day turned into night.
