The Painted Canyon

A forty-five minute drive from where we are staying took us out of the city, into a rural area,

past citrus groves, vineyards and date farms.

Never having taken note of date farming procedures,

we were intrigued with these palms loaded with muslin covered bunches of dates . . .

obviously covered for protection, but also a neat way to catch them.

Once we got past the beautifully irrigated farms and orchards,

we met up with the reality of the Mecca Hills wilderness,

driving along a sandy road for several kilometers

until we came upon these amazing sights of colored hills!

We drove as far as we could and began our walk into these huge rock outcroppings.
It is interesting to find out that these were formed by the convergence of the
North American and Pacific Plates, along the San Andreas Fault Line.

The sandy path kept getting narrower

. . .  climbing ladders

led us to yet more narrow paths.

This is one of the holes we climbed out of to explore 

the next layer up. It was fascinating!

Sometimes we  could barely see the sky.

After a half hour or so we came to a plateau of sorts



with pretty colored plant growth along the path,

 interesting rock layers

and natural fort like views!

We were not sure if there was much ahead yet so we

 headed back . . . reluctantly . . . this time climbing into the holes we had come out of.

I loved the playground feel of this place

which  reminded me of mazes that Disneyland might try to copy.

When we stopped for lunch at the bottom we met up with other hikers, just coming down, and
found out about the view we missed going to the very top plateau.

 I guess we'll just have to come back again sometime!