Poppy People cannot be contained!

Who knew an orange flower would cause such insanity?

https://www.pe.com/2019/03/18/walke...as-officials-ask-question-what-do-we-do-next/

 

LOL!!! Great thread title...

 

A buddy of mine posted this pic from the Lake Elsinore Super Bloom. Definitely a sight to see.

 

I see Fruity Pebbles!

 

It was crazy to see on the way to Greer.

And F@ck that link that won't let me read the article. No one is subscribing to Sh!t, they just need to accept getting the click bait pennies like everyone else.

 

Wow... I have to admit they tried some interesting things to block people from cutting and pasting their content... Not that it worked, but it annoyed me.

Here is the article:



In the midst of perhaps the most stunning wildflower superbloom in recent memory, the irresistible Walker Canyon poppy fields that closed in Lake Elsinore on Sunday, March 17, amid chaotic crowds have reopened — for now.

“It’s all open at this point,” Mayor Steve Manos said Monday morning, March 18, adding that weekday traffic tends to be manageable.

However, at about 2:30 p.m. Monday, the California Highway Patrol closed the northbound and southbound 15 Freeway off-ramps at Lake Street, the exit that has led visitors from across Southern California to the Walker Canyon Trailhead and the orange-colored hillsides.

The weekend traffic and associated problems — such as overflowing portable toilets, bumper-to-bumper traffic and cars parking on the 15 Freeway — were “just overwhelming,” Manos said.

On Saturday, a Lake Elsinore public works employee who had been directing traffic was struck by a hit-and-run driver, Manos said.

“A driver blew the barricade and clipped our employee,” he said, leaving scrapes on the man’s leg and upper body.

On Sunday, things got so bad that city officials canceled a shuttle service they had advertised and cut off access to the area.

City officials, public works employees and law enforcement officers met Monday afternoon to come up with a plan for managing crowds when they return next weekend. But, after the meeting, Manos said officials had yet to finalize a plan but expect to do so by Wednesday.

“We’re asking people to please be patient,” he said in the social media post. “We have heard you. We are working on a solution to go ahead and make this better.”

Manos said officials were leaning toward keeping the area open to wildflower lovers next Saturday and Sunday, March 23 and 24.

“How we are going to manage it is the question,” he said.

Described as “Disneyland-sized crowds” in a tweet by Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, the number of visitors Sunday was estimated by a law enforcement officer to be 100,000, Manos said. That’s well more than the city’s population of 66,000.

Saturday’s crowd was placed at 50,000, and approximately 20,000 visited each day of the previous weekend, Manos said.

Wildflower lovers have been flocking to the scenic Riverside County fields along the 15 Freeway from all over Southern California — and even from other states, Melendez said by phone.

With “miles of hills carpeted in orange,” she said, it’s easy to see why.

“I have never seen anything like this,” said Melendez, a 17-year resident of the city. “This is the most excitement the city has seen in all the time that I’ve been there.”

But with the extraordinary crowds have come extraordinary problems. City officials described the Sunday crowds as “unbearable” in social media posts.

“The traffic flow seemed endless,” Manos said. “It just didn’t stop,”

About noon Sunday, the California Highway Patrol reported that more than 500 vehicles were stopped on the right shoulder of the 15 Freeway in the vicinity.

Police ticketed numerous illegally parked cars on side roads. And, because of bumper-to-bumper traffic, residents had trouble reaching their homes. Also, city crews could not reach Walker Canyon fast enough to empty portable toilets, Manos said.

Several weeks ago, as expectations grew of a significant bloom fueled by heavy winter rain, city officials made the decision to install toilets. The city also announced plans to staff the area with a community services officer and Riverside County assigned a park ranger to patrol Walker Canyon, a habitat conservation area.

Then, following surging visits early this month, the city added shuttles to ferry people — at $5 per person — to the site from the Outlets of Lake Elsinore.

“They had a good plan in place for the crowd size that they expected,” Melendez said.

But she said the number of visitors far exceeded expectations. And city officials found themselves overwhelmed.

The mayor said Lake Elsinore was forced to call out all available police officers and all available city staff to help. Shuttles weren’t able to accommodate the hordes, he said, as crowds piled up in the outlet-mall parking lot.

“It was crazy,” Manos said. “At some point people were parking at the outlet center and walking all the way from the outlet center to the poppy fields. There were a lot of people making that trek, and some of them were older people.”

That’s a distance of about 3 miles, he added.

The warm weather didn’t help, either, as it put emerging reptiles into the mix.

“We had a person bit by a rattlesnake on Saturday and we had a dog bit by a rattlesnake on Sunday,” Manos said.

Amid the chaos, city officials shut down access to the area.

“The situation has escalated beyond our available resources,” the city said in a social media post late Sunday afternoon. “No additional shuttles or visitors will be allowed into Walker Canyon. This weekend has been unbearable.”

 

There is a nice bloom going on in between the runways at lax. Traffic there is less oppressive than Elsinore, apparently. So maybe we should send everyone there instead.

 

Hey I’m going there tomorrow to pick up the wife. Problem is it’ll be dark already so I should probably charge up my lights now.

 

Im gonna side with the Poppy People here. Let them enjoy. If it were something else drawing in the crowds, we’d be grumbling just the same. Its all about the crowds. Big crowds cause big problems, doesn’t matter what brought them in. So be nice to the Poppy People. They just might be as passionate about their poppies as we are about your bikes.

 

^^^ disagree. The MTB equivalent would be hundreds of gaping morons on e-bikes trying to go up all your favorite descents while hundreds of endur-brahs are trying to ride down. How do you think that would turn out?

 

Will you guys quit with the Poppy People stuff?
It took most of my life to get Poppy Family music out of my head
If you grew up in Canada they played their songs to death on top 40 stations.

 

Wow. I just started playing that music on my tablet and my dog gave me a disgusted look, got up, and left the room.

 

The people on the side of the 15 need to be shot. How stupid can you be to stop on the side of the freeway just to take a picture with some flowers.

No one ever gets hit on the shoulder...

 

Aliso.

 

People cannot be contained. The poppies represent a microcosm of wilderness, I mean wildness, I mean wilderness. It’s all wild, and we’re all astronauts.

 

Thats a little extreme, but in reality and to a leaser extent it is happening daily at every popular riding destination by human powered mountain bikers. In all varieties, people can suck.

 

In the end, we can only blame Mutha Nature for this.

 

NO! We blame the Mother AND Father for not teaching RESPECT!

 

If it's crowded in Laguna Beach, that doesn't give me the right to stop my car and park on the side of PCH (in a no-parking lane) just so I can see the waves.

I stay away from the Poppy People because they represent the worse kind of "selfie-snapping" nature poseurs - who are busy taking photos of seasonal flowers while trampling all the plants and dropping water bottles and soiled diapers everywhere they go. The good news is that they might drive 100 miles to see some flowers, but they rarely stray more than 100 yards from a parking lot. The rest of the year you will never see them out in nature - which I guess is a blessing.

When I read the newspaper article about people trying to go out there to take wedding photos, and the photographers having to leave because they can't get a shot because there are too many people out trampling on the hills - and on the way out they pack "as many empty water bottles as they can carry" it makes me really sad. I can ride Holy Jim for six months and never see so much as a gum wrapper, and yet the week after Memorial Day the trail is littered with trash, with trampled plants and trail short-cuts everywhere. And these people describe themselves as "nature lovers"?

The only good news is the warm weather has brought the snakes out. I don't want anyone to get bitten by a snake... but the snakes tend to keep people on the trails

 

We have similar going on up here, and I must admit I’m pretty territorial
The worst is when these noodle heads are driving San Fransisquito Cyn going 30 mph and are clueless to the fact that there is a line of 15 cars behind them..that’s when I snap Just check your rear view mirror once in a while people and pull over or use the turnouts! Grrrrr!

 

This is an old enough crowd that you all probably know what that green symbol is in the upper left corner of Tucker's pic. Right?
These Poppy People Rock!

 

Radiation trefoil on acid??

 

Negative Ghost Rider...
It's actually an image of an adapter. But an adapter for what?

 

A 45... and it's sad that I know that

 

Ding Ding Ding! Yup!
You just won ANOTHER free year subscription to imtbtrails. People on the trails will now envy YOU!

 

Please tell me that is from your personal collection.

 

Nope! Collection from Google images...

 

So why should it be?

Help me understand.

 

"Different people have different needs..."

 

Uh yeah I know what the green plastic insert is.
And yeah I know I'm getting older