Carrizo Plain National Monument

Before Europeans arrived, the Chumash and Yokuts peoples lived on and around this plain for many thousands of years, hunting and gathering in a landscape rich with game and seasonal plants. Their most striking mark on the land is Painted Rock, a giant horseshoe-shaped alcove of sandstone rising out of the flat grass, its inner walls once covered with elaborate multicolored paintings. It remains one of the most important rock-art sites in the American West and a sacred place to Native people today.

The plain was later ranched but, unlike the Central Valley to the north, it was never converted to farmland, so its native grasses and animals survived. In January 2001 it was designated Carrizo Plain National Monument, jointly cared for by the Bureau of Land Management, the state, and the Nature Conservancy, in order to protect both its wildlife and its cultural sites. Pronghorn antelope and tule elk still range across the grassland, along with kit foxes, kangaroo rats, and the giant kangaroo rat, several of them found almost nowhere else.

The Carrizo Plain is one of the best places on earth to see the San Andreas Fault with your own eyes. The fault, where two great slabs of the earth's crust grind past each other, runs clearly along the base of the eastern Temblor Range, and a short self-guided trail at Wallace Creek lets you stand right on it. There you can see how the fault has slowly dragged the two banks of a small creek out of line, so the streambed makes a strange sideways jog where none should be.

In the great earthquake of January 1857, one of the largest ever recorded in California, the ground here lurched about thirty feet in a single stroke. Geologists come from around the world to study this stretch of open, unbuilt ground because the fault's every movement is written so plainly across the land. For a visitor it turns an abstract idea from school into something you can walk up to and touch.

At the heart of the plain lies Soda Lake, a shallow seasonal lake with no outlet, so the water that collects there each winter simply evaporates and leaves behind a broad crust of white alkali salts that shine like snow in the sun. A boardwalk carries visitors out over the lakebed to an overlook, and in wet months the lake draws sandhill cranes and other migrating birds to its edges.

The event that has made Carrizo Plain famous is the superbloom. When winter storms drop enough rain at the right times, the dormant seeds in the grassland burst open all at once, and by March and April the valley floor and the surrounding hills run in ribbons of goldfields yellow, purple phacelia, and orange fiddleneck. It does not happen every year, and it cannot be scheduled, which is part of what makes catching one feel like a genuine stroke of luck rather than a scheduled attraction.

The monument is reached by Soda Lake Road, which runs the length of the plain and connects to State Route 58 to the north and to Route 166 near New Cuyama to the south. The main road is well kept and fine for an ordinary car, but the many dirt side roads can turn to impassable mud after rain, so save those for dry weather and stay on Soda Lake Road when it is wet. The Goodwin Visitor Center, open in the cooler months, is the place to get current conditions and directions.

Come prepared for genuine backcountry. There is no gas, no food, no water, and no cell signal anywhere on the monument, so you must bring everything you need and let someone know your plans before you go. Give the day room to breathe: walk the fault at Wallace Creek, take the boardwalk over Soda Lake, and if the timing is right for a bloom, simply drive slowly and let the color come to you. Stay for the night sky if you can, because with no towns for miles the stars over the plain are extraordinary.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.