Antelope Valley--Best. Wildflowers. Ever!

If you've read the blog much, you know that Denisa loves flowers. She always seems to have a flower picture or two in every blog because they just make her happy.

Someone had told her about a web site that updates the status of the current wildflower blooms in Southern California. The web site was reporting that Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve was hitting peak bloom.

It's a longer drive than we sometimes make for a single attraction, but the state's flower is the California poppy. Somehow she convinced Mark that this was our civic duty as temporary California residents to go see the poppies.

We also found that poppies are very sensitive to sunlight. They don't open on cloudy days.

They also roll up when the sun gets low in the sky. So we had to have good timing. We needed to go on a sunny day--not too early and not too late in the day--or they would be rolled up.

We also heard that you should avoid the weekends. Because this is within easy driving distance of Los Angeles, and the huge metro areas on the coast, Saturday and Sunday can be absolutely flooded with people that make visiting here tedious. So we picked our last weekday with sun in the forecast to make the drive to Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. As we got closer, we began seeing hills of orange.

We arrived early enough that our first pictures included some poppies that the sunshine had not yet awakened. But there were whole sections of yellow wildflowers that were already showing their sunny faces. We found that these are in the sunflower family, and are called "Goldfields." We had found a golden field of Goldfields.

But the longer we walked into the reserve and the sunnier it got, we were rewarded with more and more open flowers.

This might have been Denisa's idea, but she wasn't the only one smiling this morning.

The east side of the hills were absolutely covered with their fluorescent blooms.

Hold on to your cursor, because we couldn't help but take way too many pictures as we walked through our very favorite wildflower oasis ever!

We noticed that everyone we met on the trail was smiling. Who could help but smile in the middle of this sea or orange?

We exchanged picture-taking with a young man that explained, "My Mom would kill me if I didn't send her a picture of me with all these flowers." He's a good son! Note to our sons: your Mother would also kill you if you didn't send her pictures when you are visiting something like this.

We just kept exclaiming, "Wow!" as we walked further down the trail.

We have wandered into another of God's wonders today!

The state reserve has strict rules about staying on the trails. That keeps the flowers from being crushed by people veering off the path for the perfect picture.

We thought it was interesting that these poppies are so prolific they will even grow and bloom in the middle of that hard-packed trail.

It's amazing to know that the nature reserve doesn't plant or re-seed any of these flowers. They also don't supply any water. So what we are seeing is all natural. Likewise, we haven't enhanced the color in the pictures. This is all just the way that God made it!

It takes an "optimal storm" of at least 1/2 an inch to start the seed germination process. Then there must be other rain to help the young plants to grow, without too much that would rot the plants or wash the seeds away. This year's moisture cycle must have been just right for us to enjoy this peak bloom.

For our friends and family that are Oklahoma State University fans, we bet you haven't seen this much orange since OSU's homecoming game!

Just in case our pictures would indicate that poppies are the only wildflowers in Antelope Valley, we did spot a few other colors. This curious circle of purple in a sea of orange caught our eye.

We had never seen these Owl's Clover blooms before. The wildflower brochure described it as "maroon bracts having white tips." We can see that. It goes on, "If you look closely at the tips you might see two eyes and a beak." No, we're not seeing that one.

There are also blue lupines here. But instead of being the stars of the show, they seem to provide a nice blue under-story to enhance the orange of the poppies.

We also found this unusual white wildflower, blooming on a stalk. But wherever we were, those hills of orange made a nice background color.

Some of the poppy blooms were huge. This big guy was four inches across, completely covering Mark's palm.

The smallest award might go to this dainty white wildflower, whose whole bouquet measured less than a half-inch.

Or maybe the tiny award goes to this single vibrant purple bloom, that makes a fingerprint seem big.

When we see vast fields of wildflowers with all their colors and intricate textures, it reminds us that our God is an awesome God!

Just in case we would think that only wildflowers live in Antelope Valley, we spotted another resident beside his front door.

He stayed around for several pictures, then gave us a backwards glance as he headed home.

There are seven miles of trails at Antelope Valley, and we hiked most of them.

As we hiked higher, the wildflowers in the valley became an orange blur below us.

Up here, the blooms are further apart, but still beautiful.

We even found one poppy-less hillside that seemed strangely out of place in this nature reserve.

On this side of the park we saw more purples and yellows mixed in with the ever-present poppies.

Those purple flowers bloom in a tight bundle that looks like an explosion of purple stamens.

After three hours of wandering among the poppies, we had hiked four miles and taken hundreds of pictures, and muttered, "Wow!" too many times to count.

We stopped by the visitor center, where we learned more about poppies. We found that poppies have two separate genes that determine petal color. The first gene is yellow, the second gene creates the more typical orange color. When the soil is drier, the yellow color will begin to show. The yellow gene will also show up more towards the end of the bloom season.

It was early in the season, but we saw this completely yellow poppy amongst all his orange cousins.

We also found that these pointy green stems are hiding flowers that are forming.

They will push those green caps off when they are ready to unfurl those four broad petals.

We found in our drive to Antelope Valley that not all the poppies had been coralled inside the reserve. Many of the surrounding hills along the road were covered with blooms as well.

Many people chose to forego the $10 fee to enter the nature reserve, and just parked beside the road. That also allowed them to forego the rules of the reserve that don't allow for pictures amongst the poppies.

But we could see the crushed plants and bare spots left from these up-close poppy experiences. It looks like those strict rules at the nature reserve are a good thing.