Weekend Escape: Antelope Valley : Bud Time : Dogging the trail of those bloomin’ poppies with a pair of pugs in Basque country

BAKERSFIELD —  Visiting the local desert wildflowers is a day trip. We threw in antique shopping, a Basque dinner and a stock car race, and made a weekend of it. Which was lucky, because we were early for the flowers.

What California poppies do to the Antelope Valley when the rains, the temperature and the other still-not-understood cycles that govern them coincide under the sharp, white high-desert sun is almost indescribable. You tell uninitiated friends, “like in ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ only more so,” or “color so intense you can see them with your eyes closed,” and they nod and change the subject. Finally, they see it for themselves and come back to bore you.

The huge amount of rain this winter suggested that the poppy god might be cooking up something special for April, so in late March we set out for a preview. Not too early on Saturday morning my wife, Margo, and I put the pugs, the tapes, a soda cooler and a small bag in the car and started north, up California 14, past the jagged cowboy-movie outcrops of Vasquez Rocks, then down the incline past the Pearblossom cutoff to the Antelope Valley, into the instant cities of Palmdale and Lancaster.

We’d left without a sit-down breakfast, an omission that we proceeded to remedy in Lancaster at La Salsa Inn, a nondescript drive-through that promised Mexican seafood. It was too far from the ocean to feel confident about trying the ceviche, but an experimental order of a fish taco produced gratifying results. After two asada (grilled beef) and two fish tacos, washed down with a quart of the refreshing Mexican rice drink horchata ($7), we felt strong enough to face the flowers.

There were poppies, though not many. We rolled west along Avenue I, the bountifully snow-covered San Gabriel mountains standing out in the clear air to the north, following the jog in the road northward toward the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, a state facility featuring a quarter mile of rough-surface gravel road leading to a crowded parking lot.

During peak bloom time on a weekend afternoon, the entire area is insanely, wildly congested. (The city of Lancaster has, with fingers crossed, established April 22-23 as the dates of its poppy festival this year. But as of press time Wednesday, rangers were saying the bloom would probably peak this week and next.) Even on this last weekend in March, people were stacked up to pay to park, even though they could park for free along miles of equally poppy-lined road adjoining the facility. Still, the view from the chain of hillocks that make up the reserve provides a nice walk, and the crowd itself can be interesting, if you’re in the right mood.

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The park put us in the wrong mood with its attitude toward pugs. We hadn’t been there with them before. It was $2 extra--$1 per flat nose or 25 cents per paw--to drive them into the parking lot. There, however, they had to stay, except for an excursion on the 50-yard cement walk leading to the visitors center. While Margo walked around the parking lot with the pugs, I took a brief turn around the nearest butte. Big patches of color were visible in some areas, but not many. Very promising--I could see big clumps of immature plants with buds forming. I returned, started up the car and headed west. The plan was to spend the night in Bakersfield, and come back by another wildflower spot to make a loop.

We arrived at the city on the banks of the Kern not quite an hour’s easy drive later, our American Automobile Assn. tour book open. Margo had laid down an ultimatum: “If we’re going to Bakersfield,” she said, “we’re going to stay somewhere nice.”

This was, in Bakersfield, the affordable dream: Almost every hotel room in the city, per the AAA book, is under $100, many of them under $50, quite a few accepting pets. We finally turned in at the Red Lion Hotel, at the $84 AAA rate not quite the most expensive pet-accepting place in town. It had a decent-size pool and the rooms were huge. The lobby was filled with trim, agile 60-year-olds--the Smooth Dancers were having a convention. “This will do,” Margo said. We moved into a room down the hall from a hospitality suite where high-spirited Smooth Dancers were harmonizing on “Daisy, Daisy.”

This got us perfectly in the mood for Item 1, antiques. The city has about 30 places--listed on a handy folio given out everywhere--that sell antiques and memorabilia. By 4:30, we had found our way to 19th Street, which presents a neat cross-section of old Bakersfield as it runs east.

First, a procession of beautiful, old and classic California houses. We stopped in front of one: two gorgeous stories with a porch running around one side, punctuated by a line of massive wood columns, like an Edwardian mini-Parthenon. The ponytailed owner (in Los Angeles, you’d guess stuntman) was outside washing his sport-utility.

Farther down, 19th passes through downtown, then narrows into a one-way shopping street. We parked in front of the Golden Carousel. Margo had just browsed an antique mart in Santa Monica, and her initial take was that items here were half of the price there. Across the street was an old Woolworth’s that’s been converted into another antique boutique, which closed at 6. We were both getting hungry. I’d never been to the Wool Growers Restaurant, a Basque place.

Basque shepherds, judging by their restaurants, are by a huge margin the hungriest human beings on the planet: With appetites like these, I don’t understand how they can be left alone with sheep. The dining format is simple: No one escapes without being stuffed like a goose. It begins with a bucket of soup, a quart of pink beans and a couple pounds of bread, and continues through a huge plate of sliced tongue with olive oil--and then they bring giant plates of meat or fish, accompanied by tureens of vegetables and platters of pasta.

“We’re still a little hungry,” I told the hostess on the way out. She did not smile. “Get your waitress,” she ordered. “We’ll take care of you.”

We managed to escape, and headed for Mesa Marin Raceway, just a few miles east of the city on Lake Isabella Road, for the opening race of the 1995 NASCAR season. It’s a short track, just one-half mile in diameter. More important, the track has great acoustics; the banked turns at both ends focus the engine noise up at the audience. The teen-age girls in the crowd (and the place was packed) like to join in, screaming in harmony with the motors. At 10, Margo threatened to push me in front of an oncoming Grand American, so we headed back to the Red Lion and the pugs, who had spent about as much time alone as was safe.

We got up none too early the next morning, brewed good coffee (the hotel supplied a coffee maker with grounds, no instant), munched bagels and walked the dogs. We stopped before leaving town at Rosemary’s Creamery, an ice cream parlor we had noticed in an orbit through town packed with Bakersfieldians. Strawberry shortcake with their own fresh ice cream was delicious, and their low-fat yogurt was good too. We headed home by way of Tehachapi, hoping for wildflowers.

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Budget for Two

Red Lion, one night: $94.58

Meals, soda: 60.85

Poppy Reserve: 7.00

Mesa Marin Raceway: 16.00

Gas: 20.00

FINAL TAB: $198.43

Red Lion Hotel, 3100 Camino Del Rio Court, Bakersfield, CA 93308; tel. (805) 323-7111 or (800) 733-5466. Wildflower Hot Line: (805) 724-1180, staffed by volunteers 9 a.m.-4 p.m. daily; line often busy. California Department of Parks and Recreation district office: (805) 942-0662 .