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LAKE ELSINORE — A Southern California city overwhelmed by throngs of visitors seeking out a rare wildflower bloom says it has a parking plan.
Lake Elsinore police chief Michael Lujan said Thursday that weekend visitors will no longer be allowed to park on streets by a popular trail leading through patches of orange poppies.
Rather, they will be sent to parking areas to buy tickets to board a shuttle to Walker Canyon.
The city about a 90-minute drive from Los Angeles was swamped last weekend with about 150,000 people craving to see the super bloom spawned by heavy winter rains.
Officials shut access to the area Sunday as traffic was jammed and people fainted in the heat.
Authorities also asked travelers not to park on the freeway to look at the flowers.
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I saw this on the Press democrap, but I posted it anyway. Their paywall is semi-porous..
Unintended consequences of social media. Online publications pushed stories about the super bloom. Motels and restaurants did really well as a result. Local residents and law enforcement got the brunt of it.
It will be interesting if the parking/transportation solves the problem. Maybe someone can post a follow up story on this. Or if anyone has taken the bus to see the flowers, how did it go?
On my desert road trip the weekend before last I went by Antelope Valley State Preserve and there was a mile-long traffic jam of people waiting to get into the parking lot (as well as hundreds of cars parked will-he nill-he by the side of the road).
rightstar76 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2019 5:36 am
Unintended consequences of social media. Online publications pushed stories. Motels and restaurants did really well as a result. Local residents and law enforcement got the brunt of it.
TehipiteTom wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2019 12:02 pm
there was a mile-long traffic jam of people waiting to get into the parking lot (as well as hundreds of cars parked will-he nill-he by the side of the road).
Happens here in So Lake Tahoe after a big snow storm as well...
"The enemy is socialism, the enemy is statism, the enemy is collectivism."
Javier Milei
El Presidente de Argentina
LOS ANGELES — Flower lovers are going to new heights to get to this year’s super bloom.
On Tuesday, park officials with the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve said that a pair of visitors had set a helicopter down Monday amid the fields of orange blossoms in Lancaster and then proceeded to walk around.
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“We never thought it would be explicitly necessary to state that it is illegal to land a helicopter in the middle of the fields and begin hiking off trail in the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve,” officials said in a Facebook post along with the hashtag #Don’tDoomTheBloom.
“We were wrong.”
A couple landed the helicopter and walked out onto the fields of flowers, the park said. When a law enforcement officer began approaching, the pair ran back to the chopper and flew away.
Staff members are working to identify the helicopter and its pilot, said Russ Dingman, a spokesman for the reserve.
There is a pasture (fenced) on the east side of Pacheco Pass full of mustard (I think) that hasn't been grazed yet - sheep and cows have grazed adjoining fields so no flowers there. People are happily parking next to the freeway climbing barbed wire fence to take pics of their kids running around in the flowers. Private property and posted as such. This field is probably there every year - I drive back and forth to the coast a number of times a year and it's not unusual to find flower filled fields in spring in California. But the superbloom madness makes them special now. It's only the past couple of years that taking selfies in flowers has become a "thing". Now people take risks for pics - saw some folks parked precariously off the pavement on Pacheco Pass with traffic whizzing by full speed, on a steep pullout with a woman perched on a tall fencepost while the friend in the car leaned out the window with the phone to take the picture. The flowers behind her weren't even all that.
