We spent the first couple days of our trip exploring the southernmost side of Anza Borrego (along S2), basecamped at Agua Caliente Hot Spring. It was nice to camp there since we had the nice hot pools to come back to at the end of the day!

On Monday we checked out two areas I had found along S2 near the town of Ocotillo. The primary attractions were fossils and wind caves. This area, though now the middle of the desert near the Mexican border, used to be an ocean floor. There are many signs of this, especially in an area called Fossil Canyon. The rocks in this canyon are made up of fossilized sea creatures. It’s easy to find clam shells, corals, oyster shells, and more.

During the second half of the day we hiked into the Domelands to find the lesser-known wind caves. If you search for wind caves in Anza Borrego you’ll learn about the other ones – these aren’t in many books but I was determined to find them. It’s good that I had pretty detailed waypoints since the route goes through some of the badlands-style canyons, and those are a maze!

One of the coolest things we saw on this day was on the way to the windcaves at a place we called Sand Dollar Hill. Again, a sign of what this area once was, there were millions of sand dollar pieces scattered all over the desert floor.

Once at the wind caves the weather picked up, getting super windy, rainy, and dark. I would have loved to explore the area a bit more, but it just wasn’t practical given the conditions. I would definitely like to come back to this area someday and really explore. We also cancelled plans to drive the Canyon sin Nombre 4×4 road in to some mud caves since it was starting to rain. Guess we’ll just have to come back!

• Pictures from this day: Fossil Canyon and Domelands