'Rusty gold.....'

(CLICK ON PICTURES TO ENLARGE)

7:05 am - PST - Friday - 62º F, humidity 46%, wind 6 mph out of the northwest........very cloudy.....rain in the forecast for early this evening.  Very warm for this time of the morning, but I love it.....had the windows open all last night.

I started off Thursday with another bike ride.....this time I just rode into town and back by myself determined to push tall gears going and coming.  For the first 13 miles my average speed was 16.1 mph, but those last three uphill miles back to Rockhouse Road were killers.....my final average was 14.8......not bad.  According to my Garmin I covered 16.3 miles in one hour and 3 minutes, and burned 1,002 calories.  TLE and I both did our daily workouts early as we wanted to do some more site seeing in the afternoon.

When we were here last year we had planned to take the tour of the numerous metal sculptures all around the Borrego Springs area.....well Thursday was the day we decided to check them out.....they are on land owned by Galleta Meadows, LLC (see below).....Galleta Meadows is not a location as far as I can tell, but the name of the limited liability company that owns various plots of land on the outskirts of Borrego Springs where they have placed these sculptures......

......these pictures are in no particular order, and are definitely not in the order we saw them....

 'Raptor'

 Wild horses

 Another raptor with its 'kill'

Juan Bautista de Anza

 Sabre toothed tiger (there were many)

 Survival of the fittest 

 'Sea' serpant (on both sides of the road)

 Camels

 Giant sloths

Giant mouse

Giant scorpion takes on giant grasshopper

Between TLE and I we took pictures representing the various groupings of sculptures, but not of every single one.  There were dozens of wild horses in one field interacting with sabre tooth tigers, and with each other.  Many of the sculptures were connected via these small, well groomed dirt roads........

.....easily driveable, even for our low profile VW Beetle.  We spent about 2 hours going from sculpture to sculpture thoroughly fascinated by the artistry, detail and subject matter.  Most all of the sculptures have this wonderful, rich rusty patina.  If you are in this area this self guided tour is definitely one you will wish to take.  My pictures do not do these sculptures justice, but I hope they give you a reasonable idea of what they are about.

By the time we finished our self guided tour, stopped off in town to get rid of some trash in a local dumpster, and did a small shopping it was getting on to 3 pm.  Our batteries had reached 100% charge sometime before we left on our self guided tour of Anza Borrego's 'rusty gold'.

TLE pulled out another top sirloin steak she had bought at the Quartzite General Store a few weeks ago.  She made this very spicey, delicious marinade that she soaked the the steak in for about 2.5 hours.....by the time I placed it on the 400º grill it was already sooo tender, and the aroma coming off that seared meat sent my imagination soaring.  It took about 14 minutes (7 minutes per side) to reach medium rare perfection.....TLE let it rest for a few minutes before slicing it into thin strips.  She also provided some amazing seasoned guacamole in which to dip the steak, and some marinaded and sauteed bell peppers and onions.  That guacamole was to die for.....I cherished every bite of that steak!

We were in bed by 11 pm dreaming of Friday's adventures.......thanks for stopping by!