{"id":28961,"date":"2025-03-01T00:01:14","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T08:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=28961"},"modified":"2025-03-01T06:10:43","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T14:10:43","slug":"galleta-meadows-estate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2025\/03\/01\/galleta-meadows-estate\/","title":{"rendered":"Galleta Meadows Estate"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Joe Berk<\/h6>\n

So let’s say you’re a rich guy…not little rich from a corporate job where you’re overtitled and overpaid, but big rich as in inheriting a fortune from Dad.\u00a0 Let’s say Dad was George Avery, the guy who founded the label making company of the same name.\u00a0 We’re talking big bucks here, folks.\u00a0 What do you do with all that money?<\/p>\n

Dennis Avery was the guy we’re talking about here.\u00a0 He was George Avery’s son and he was a good guy who did good things with his money.\u00a0 He gave away a lot to worthy causes both in the U.S. and overseas.\u00a0 Kids going to school.\u00a0 AIDS clinics.\u00a0 Authors writing interesting books.\u00a0 Kids’ athletic endeavors. And lots, lots more.<\/p>\n

An author Dennis helped was George Jefferson (not the one from the TV sitcom The Jeffersons<\/em>, but instead a guy who studied geology and dinosaurs).\u00a0 Jefferson wanted to write a book about dinosaurs and with Avery’s support, he did.\u00a0 That brings us to a point where Dennis meets Ricardo Breceda.<\/p>\n

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The 3,000-acre estate Dennis Avery bought is called Galleta Meadows. “Galleta” means cookie or biscuit in Spanish.\u00a0 It also refers to a species of grass (not marijuana, but actual grass) that grows in the area (see below).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Galleta grass. It grows up to about two feet tall and it thrives in the desert.\u00a0 The name is probably due to the plant’s seeds, which look like little flattened cookies.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But before we get there, Dennis started buying land in and around Borrego Springs, a small desert town northeast of San Diego.\u00a0 Mr. Avery liked it as is, and didn’t want to see it consumed by development as has happened in so many other parts of California.\u00a0 Score one for the good guys here, folks.<\/p>\n

Breceda was a guy who grew up in Mexico, came to the United States, tried a few different business ventures, and ended up owning welding equipment.\u00a0 He wasn’t a welder initially, but he learned how to use the welding gear.\u00a0 Kind of like Joe Gresh.\u00a0 \u00a0Breceda’s daughter had seen the new hit movie, Jurassic Park, and she wanted a dinosaur for her birthday.\u00a0 Breceda had a welding machine. You can see where this is going.\u00a0 After creating a dino for his daughter, Breceda started making and selling large metal sculptures.\u00a0 You can’t miss them.\u00a0 We’ve seen them in various parts of southern California, including a very large mastodon looking over the 60 freeway near Riverside not too far from where we live.<\/p>\n

One day, Dennis Avery is driving by, and he notices the large metal creatures crafted by Breceda.\u00a0 He stops in to talk.\u00a0 See where this is going?<\/p>\n

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What looks like hair on Breceda’s sculptures is actually tiny strips of sheet metal. We have some cool things out in our California deserts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To make a long and fascinating story a little less long and a little more fascinating, Avery and Breceda struck up a deal to repopulate Galleta Meadows with creatures from the Plio-Pleistocene age (a period combining the Pliocene and Pleistocene eras that began 5 million years ago and lasted until about 12,000 years ago).\u00a0 The concept took off from there, and the art expanded to include other creatures.\u00a0 One is the 300-foot-long dragon\/sea serpent you see in the photos at the top of this blog and in the three photos below.<\/p>\n

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A sense of scale. The sea serpent dragon is huge. That’s my sister Eileen and my wife Susie taking it all in.\u00a0 You can walk under the coils further back.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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It’s hard to imagine the labor that went into these sculptures.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We were astounded by the number of sculptures in the immediate area of the sea serpent.\u00a0 It surprised me that we didn’t the others at first; I guess it was because we fixated on the sea serpent sculpture I had programmed into my Waze navigation app.<\/p>\n

While we were viewing the sea serpent and taking a bunch of photos, we saw another sculpture almost hidden in the nearby desert.\u00a0 We drove through the area’s dirt pathways to get a better look.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 You can walk right up to these things.\u00a0 It was amazing.<\/p>\n

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Another prehistoric beast, as interpreted by Ricardo Breceda. It almost seems life like.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A better shot, with the sun at my back. The old iPhone was getting a workout and it was doing a good job. I was thinking I could get better photos with my Nikon the entire time I was out there in the Anza Borrego desert. Anza Borrego translates into Bighorn sheep. They’re in the area, but we didn’t see any.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A closer shot of the beast above showing how Breceda used thin strips of sheet metal to simulate hair. Brilliant work, this is.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then we spotted another sculpture 50 yards or so away.\u00a0 They were popping out like Easter eggs or seeing the whales in Scammons Lagoon down in Baja.\u00a0 At first you don’t see any.\u00a0 Then they suddenly appear in a manner that makes you wonder why you didn’t see them before.\u00a0 We were enjoying the experience.<\/p>\n

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Oppossums and other modern animals carry their young like this. The artist is brilliant. This rusty old things actually look alive.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another view of the prehistoric mama and her baby. That dark spot under her tail? It’s another sculpture off in the distance.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After photographing the sculpture above, I looked around and there was yet another one way off in the desert.\u00a0 It was a camel of some sort.\u00a0 This was really cool stuff.<\/p>\n

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Would you walk a mile for this camel? I would and I will. I’ll be back with better equipment next time.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The entire adventure was sort of an Easter egg hunt, with our spotting yet another sculpture a rifle shot or so away that we hadn’t noticed driving into the area.\u00a0 I think you probably could see them all from the road if you knew where to look for them, but we didn’t know until we were at the sea serpent.\u00a0 I’m glad I didn’t know where to look.\u00a0 I felt like a little kid discovering one more each time I moved on to another.\u00a0 It was great fun.<\/p>\n

When I finished taking the iPhone photos you see here, I thought I had captured all the sculptures.\u00a0 Boy, was I wrong.\u00a0 In researching the sculptures, the artist, and the man who sponsored it all, I was astounded to learn that there are actually 130 of these things scattered around the Galleta Meadows Estate.\u00a0 We had seen only a half dozen.\u00a0 You know what that means:\u00a0 Another trip.\u00a0 On the next one, I’ll bring along the Nikon D810 and my tripod, and I’ll get better pictures.\u00a0 That’s going to be really cool.<\/p>\n

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The obligatory selfie. Maybe I’m a narcissist. It was the middle of February, and it was a comfortable 70 degrees out in the Anza Borrego desert. My wife, my sister, and I had a great time<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Getting there was both easy and fun.\u00a0 We started in Escondido and picked up California State Route 78 east.\u00a0 \u00a0That’s a glorious ride on either a motorcycle or a car, winding through the mountains and then bringing you up to the Anza Borrego desert floor (where the sculptures reside).\u00a0 We stopped in Julian for breakfast and a delicious slice of apple and cherry pie along the way.\u00a0 It was a fun day.<\/p>\n

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The 70-series roads in southern California are fabulous roads. This is a great ride. If you’re going to see the Breceda sculptures, you can get right next to them in a car; you cannot do so on a motorcycle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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