What’s the real deal on California weather and reports of disasters playing out in the current media?
Currently California is in a weather pattern that comes along every so often, one that causes a lot of temporary problems, no doubt. But it also solves a whole bunch of other problems that pretty regularly also plague our great state. We are getting a lot of rain and snow that in turn replenishes our reservoirs and ground water basins with the run off, as well as with snow pack that melts off throughout the subsequent summer months. We desperately need this after close to a 8-9 year drought. Conversely, we’ll see weather related road closures, some mudslides and avalanche damaged roads in a lot of central and northern areas of our state. But most of that is going to occur far from where Vintage Surfari Wagons sends you out on the road.
What you’re probably not seeing reported is that about 99% of these somewhat extreme weather incidents are happening primarily in the 2/3rds of California north of Los Angeles. In fact the counties of Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Imperial, and San Diego have been largely spared the deluges and floods that those other parts of the state are experiencing. This leaves a whole lot of California ripe for exploration in the midst of all the bad news.
The entire coastline of Orange County and south are open, and the beaches are beautifully un crowded. That's close to 100 miles of coastline to explore. And there are 6 wonderful California State Park system campgrounds along that coast as well as a dozen more regional and privately run campgrounds on down the coast. The areas east of those two counties (Riverside, Imperial, and San Bernardino) are largely situated in the dry deserts of the state and receive a small percentage of the precipitation that reaches the central and northern coast, so it’s almost always sunny and dry out that way. Top that fact with lots of spectacular and beautiful places out there to camp in solitude and watch the stars at night. It still gets some rain, but that only assures that the spring desert blooms will likely be abundant and incredibly colorful this year.
Bottom line? It’s not as disasterous as you may have heard, and there's still thousands of square miles of the Golden State to explore and enthrall you. Get in touch with us at VSW and we’ll be happy to suggest some routes we especially like that you might consider in, thru, and around these ‘roads less traveled’ topographies of Southern California.
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