How big is Anza-Borrego Desert State Park?

More than 600,000 acres, or roughly 1,000 square miles. It is the largest state park in California and the third largest in the United States, spanning parts of San Diego, Riverside and Imperial counties.

How much does it cost to enter Anza-Borrego?

Day use is $10 per vehicle, collected at the Visitor Center, developed campgrounds and several popular trailheads including The Slot and Hellhole Canyon. The park has no entrance gates and much of it can be accessed without a fee.

When is wildflower season at Anza-Borrego?

Annual wildflowers can appear from January through mid-April, with peak bloom most often between late February and early April. Timing varies year to year based on rainfall and temperature.

Is Anza-Borrego a Dark Sky Park?

Yes. The park was designated an International Dark Sky Park in 2018 at Silver tier. Borrego Springs, the town at its center, has been an International Dark Sky Community since 2009, the first in California.

Do I need four-wheel drive at Anza-Borrego?

Not for the paved roads, the Visitor Center or the main campgrounds. The vast majority of the park's roughly 500 miles of dirt roads do require a high-clearance four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Is Anza-Borrego Desert State Park open at night?

Yes, the park is open 24 hours a day, year-round. The Visitor Center is open daily 9am to 5pm October through May, and weekends and holidays only June through September.

Brice Weaver • November 8, 2026

Photographs and Memories: Imperfect and Authentic

By: Brice Weaver

www.briceweaverphotography

What happens when a photograph becomes your only memory of something you experienced?

I recently came across an Instagram video of a woman looking through photographs with her husband, who had apparently suffered a brain injury affecting his memory. The photographs captured their first dance together. As they looked through them, she gently asked whether he remembered certain moments.

I found myself thinking about that video long after watching it. For her, those photographs were connected to experiences she could still remember. For him, they offered a visual record of moments he could no longer recall.

We take photographs assuming we’ll remember the moments surrounding them. But what happens when we don’t? What happens when a photograph becomes our only connection to an experience, a person, or a particular time in our lives? And what happens when that photograph has been altered so extensively that it no longer represents what actually occurred?

We’re living in a time when artificial intelligence can generate convincing images of events that never happened. Digital editing allows us to remove people, replace backgrounds, alter expressions, and reconstruct scenes until they bear little resemblance to the original moment.

Much of the debate surrounding AI-generated imagery focuses on creativity, copyright, and whether these images should even be considered photography. But I think there’s another question we aren’t discussing nearly enough.

What happens when the photographs we create today become the memories someone depends on tomorrow?

Now Imagine looking through your own photographs decades later, unable to distinguish which details were genuine and which had been added, removed, or generated.

Human memory is already imperfect. We forget, reconstruct, and sometimes unintentionally change our recollections. Photographs have traditionally provided an external reference, even if that reference was never entirely objective. If we begin treating every photograph as something to be perfected rather than preserved, what happens to that relationship?

That short video brought the issue into a much more human perspective for me. The couple wasn’t discussing photography, artificial intelligence, or photographic ethics. They were simply looking at pictures, trying to reconnect with moments from their lives.

You don’t need photographs to show a better version of your life. You need them to show the life you actually lived.

We spend so much time asking how to make photographs look better. Perhaps we should spend more time asking what we need them to remember.

As AI and digital manipulation become increasingly sophisticated, where do you draw the line between improving a photograph and changing the history it represents?