Travel takes on lots of perspectives, depending on your mode of getting around. From high above in a plane, out the window of a moving car or train or perhaps from a bicycle perch, each grants its own scope of exploration.

For an up close, intimate look at your surroundings, nothing beats hiking and connecting with your environment step by step. And nothing could be more perfectly suited to hiking than the collaboration of your own two feet and nature’s pure scenic beauty discovered in our state parks and national monuments.

In celebration of Anza-Borrego Desert Foundation’s 50th Anniversary, the Foundation and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park are inviting visitors to complete the 5 Hikes for 50 Years Challenge on some of the state park’s most famous and infamous peaks and trails.

This challenge designed to unfold the wonders of California’s largest state park is a winning challenge no matter what your hiking level might be.

You will be ensconced in some hidden natural beauty that is mainly enjoyed by the surrounding wildlife from your very first step to the last.

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Flowering indigo, beavertail cactus and desert dandelions buzz with insects along the seemingly misnamed trail. Camera-toting hikers, including the California Native Plant Society’s Bay Area members, wander among towering ocotillo, yellow brittlebush and red chuparosa.

Some hikers will say there are no waterfalls. That is easy to believe in what appears to be a vast, waterless landscape. But keep hiking, determined to find waterfalls in a desert. You will be rewarded.

Farther in, canyon wrens laugh as the trail scrambles over boulders and criss-crosses a creek meandering through a lush, shady palm oasis until at last you find secluded Maidenhair Falls, a slender cascade dropping 18 to 20 feet into a small pool beneath a wall of ferns.

Anza-Borrego is one of California’s southernmost state parks – stretching nearly to the Mexican border.

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