It was an unusually rainy winter this year in Southern California which has resulted in a rare “Super Bloom” of wild flowers in the desert areas. One of the largest areas of California’s state flower the California Poppy bloomed beautifully over a mountainside near our home in Lake Elsinore covering the hills with an ocean of orange. Thousands of people, news crews, and professional photographers are trekking out to our area to snap photos of the rare wild flowers. While my Mom visited a few weeks back, we too went out to get a few photos since we keep hearing how rare this is.

My takeaway from the experience?

ABSOLUTELY crazy. Thousands of people sit in traffic, to trek up a mountainside, to look at an orange flower. While we were there someone was arrested for stepping on the flowers because they couldn’t resist the urge to get the perfect Instagram photo by laying in the flowers. They have park rangers present to keep people on specific trails and if you get remotely close to the flowers they give you a stern warning to get away. They purposely have the public area gated therefore, technically you are trespassing allowing them to make arrests if you step on or pick the flowers. I had envisioned getting photos of Audrey frolicking in the flowers like Julie Andrews from The Sound of Music; but the flower police crushed my dreams and I was able to get her eating dirt instead. At least she has the photos to look back on, my Mom has the memory of climbing through a fence, trekking up a dirt path, and battling hundreds of people for these photos, and we had the opportunity to relish in God’s beautiful nature (until we were elbowed by an IG model trying to get the perfect lighting).