How’s it going everyone? We’re now halfway through the month of April and it’s starting to feel a whole lot like summer here in Southern California. As a way to celebrate my 32nd birthday, myself and two of my closest friends spent a weekend at my favorite campsite in Anza Borrego for some off-roading adventures! It reached over 100 degrees on Saturday, so this will likely be our last trip out here until the fall when things start to cool off, but that’s fine by me, as we had an incredible weekend of wild thrills and heart pumping excitement.
We ended up renting a four hour rental package from Steve’s ATVs over by the Salton Sea, which was only a 40 minute ride from our campground. The staff there was very helpful, and kind enough to extend a 10% discount for my birthday – thank you team!
After a brief check in process and a 10 minute instructional video, we were gearing up and priming our vehicles. I ended up driving a two seater Rzr, which my girlfriend manned the passenger seat and acted as our navigator, while my good friend Luke braved the heat on a Can-Am quad.
While we had a ton of fun exploring the desert on our own, we definitely ran into some navigation issues, at one point getting lost amongst the Badlands region, which was a desolate void of sun, sand, sky
Luckily I’ve been working on my compass and navigation skills over the past year, and so we were able to make it back to safety without the need to call a rescue crew (at a few points I thought we may have to call them…if there was even service out where we were!)
Finally, once we were able to get our bearings and locate one of the main, designated trails, we drove back to Steve’s to drop off the machines.
After all that fun in the sun we were feeling drained, so I cooked up some tasty pad thai with my new Jetboil Stash camping stove:
We all woke up Sunday morning feeling very drained and sore, but appreciative of the amazing time we had the day before. And before we packed our bags to head back to civilization, we were treated to another amazing desert sunrise
Overall it was a great celebration with even greater people, and I’ll miss spending time out in the desert while waiting for the seasons to change, but in the meantime I have a few more fun trips planned that I can’t wait to share with you all!
