A Secret Sea Serpent Rises From The Sand

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition," as Monty Python cheerfully reminded us many years ago. Also, nobody expects a giant metallic sculpture of a sea serpent rising from the sandy desert floor on the edge of the Anza Borrego State Park. It is just so unexpected!

106 meters (350 feet) in length and 4.5 meters (15 feet) tall, the gorgeous fiery sea serpent lazily stretches across the desert road, snaking out of the ground with the illusion there is a whole other world beneath the desert sands. I was awestruck, stunned by its magnificent, forked tongue, ferocity. You can walk in and around the beautiful beast, all the way to its rattle shaped tail.

You may think it is a bit of a stretch to call this sculpture a secret, but it is relatively unknown and unvisited because it is so far off the beaten track. It is a couple of hours drive from Palm Springs from the North and about the same from San Diego in the South, it appears it cannot compete with the beaches and the big cities of California. In the scorching heat of the summer sun, we apparently had the entire place to ourselves.

The sculptures are located on the Galleta Meadows Estate, on the outskirts of the Anza Borrego State Park. Dennis Avery, the owner of the estate, called upon renowned metal sculptor Ricardo Breceda to create something extraordinary to adorn his land. Breceda did exactly that by creating more than 100 sculptures that seem to pop up from nowhere,  surreal creatures rising from the earth and defiantly withstanding the extreme desert heat.

We loved the the stand off between the scorpion and the grasshopper, staring each other down like MMA fighters before a big fight, intimidating, hinting at the whipping action of a tail sting or the nippy spring of an aerial attack, the desert floor their octagon stage.

There were dinosaurs, camels, tortoises, anteaters, javelinas, elephants and more, all with a prehistoric edge to them, as if they had been captured in time and rooted to the earth for millennia. We also loved the sculptures that honored the traditions of workers toiling in the heat to bring in the harvest, Grapes-of-Wrath-Style. The lone monk carrying a cross was stark and moving in its isolated position. Beautiful at sunset. The jeep rising out off the stony earth in utter off-roading glee with drivers flung back, hair flying was a delight. We spent hours driving around the estate, seeking out the incredible metal work.

After ice-creams and water a-plenty, we set off to explore more of the landscape of the Anza Borrego State Park.

Anza Borrego State Park is the largest state park in California at over 600,00 acres of rugged, jagged, desert. Three times the size of Zion, eight times the size of Arches and in California, only dwarfed by the enormous acreage of the magnificent Yosemite National Park.

Anza Borrego SP is incredibly diverse, sprawling, surrounded by mountains and surprisingly quiet. Most visitors come for the hiking to secret slot canyons, secret oases, secret caves, secret waterfalls. Yes, there is a theme here. The park is so huge, it can hold lots of people without it feeling crowded at all. In fact most of the time, you feel as if you are the only person on the planet. This is what makes it feel so special; intimate and secret, as if you are discovering the land for the very first time, planting footsteps like Neil Armstrong, where no human being has been before, a place lost in time. We took in the astonishing scenery but because the hot temperatures had ridden up so high, 120+ F, hiking was simply out of the question. Also because it was so dry, sandy and (scuse the pun) deserted, and we had no wifi signal, plus it was getting dark, we did not want the truck to get stuck, wheels spinning, in the middle of nowhere. 
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I will be dreaming of secret sea serpents for many nights to come!