One of our recent destinations for astronomical observing was a remote spot near the center of the Anza Borrego National Park.This area is a very rugged and sparse desert in Southern California starting 60 miles or so to the east of San Diego. Our purpose for this trip was to find dark and clear skies for viewing the 2002 Leonid meteor shower.

Our destination of choice was an area appropriately known as the Diablo Drop-off. We loaded up the Jeep TJ early Saturday morning and headed down the San Diego freeway from our home in Orange and crossed over the mountains by way of Escondido and Julian, dropping into the Anza Borrego basin after a couple of hours driving.

Getting to the actual site required driving through sandy washes for 15 miles, or so. If you've never been out to a place like this, you will find it quite unique. The sandy washes are like canyons with a loose sand bottom, tall sides and are typically very narrow. Most of the time, a GPS will work which is good since it is fairly easy to lose one's sense of direction as the canyon winds its way through the desert with the tall walls blocking your view for miles.

We arrived at our destination mid afternoon and started setting up camp. The place we chose was on the edge of a precipice which dropped off about 1000 feet to the desert floor below. Donna and I brought out the lawn chairs, a folding table and had a nice dinner overlooking hundreds of square miles of badlands. A few more campers showed up before sundown about two miles away. This is crowded by Anza Borrego standards, but it was far enough away to not be an issue.

The weather was cloudy at first but did clear off well before midnight. The meteor shower was fantastic, with one fireball lighting up the sky so brightly, I at first thought it must be car headlights approaching from the distance. This also seemed entirely illogical since it was coming from the direction of the drop-off.

We also brought our vintage 8" Celestron telescope for observing in the dark desert skies and you can see this set up in the pictures below.

Anza Camp Photo Gallery

Click for larger image - some are duplicates at higher resolution