Flower mill: Nature puts on show
Mob scene in meadows overwhelms Calif. town
LAKE ELSINORE, Calif. — Like Dorothy in the “Wizard of Oz,” the Southern California city of Lake Elsinore is being overwhelmed by the power of the poppies.
About 150,000 people over the weekend flocked to see this year’s rain-fed flaming orange patches of poppies lighting up the hillsides near the city.
Interstate 15 was a parking lot. People fainted in the heat; a dog romping through the fields was bitten by a rattlesnake.
Lake Elsinore had tried to prepare for the crush of people drawn by the superbloom, a rare occurrence that usually happens about once a decade because it requires a wet winter and temperatures that stay above freezing.
It offered a free shuttle service to the top viewing spots, but that wasn’t enough.
Sunday traffic got so bad that Lake Elsinore officials requested law enforcement assistance from neighboring jurisdictions. At one point, the city pulled down the curtain and closed access to poppy-blanketed Walker Canyon.
By Monday, the #poppy shutdown announced by the city on Twitter was over and the road to the canyon was reopened.
And people were streaming in again.
Young and old visitors to the
Lake Elsinore area seemed equally enchanted as they snapped selfies against the natural carpet of iridescent orange.
Some contacted friends and family on video calls so they could share the beauty in real time. Artists propped canvases on the side of the trail to paint the super bloom, while drones buzzed overhead.
Patty Bishop, 48, of nearby Lake Forest, was on her second visit. The native Californian had never seen such an explosion of color from the state flower.
It helps that the masses of blooms are appearing in several different areas this time, and some sections are fading, while others are lighting up with flowers, helping to disperse the crowds a bit.
JACKSON, Miss. — Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren on Monday embraced a congressional proposal to study a framework for reparations to African-americans hurt by the legacy of slavery as the best way to begin a “national, full-blown conversation” on the issue.
Warren, during a CNN town hall broadcast from Mississippi, also came out in favor of eliminating of the Electoral College.
She has been critical of the Electoral College in the past, saying last year that Trump’s 2016 victory is “not exactly the sign of a healthy democracy.” But Warren’s comments on Monday were her most straightforward endorsement of an end to the Electoral College system.
She also faced a tough question about her past claims to Native American identity as she attempts to move past a DNA analysis she released last year that showed “significant evidence” of a distant tribal ancestor.
Warren told the audience that, growing up in Oklahoma, “I learned about my family from my family,” adding, “That’s just kind of who I am, and I do the best I can with it.”