The Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve is blooming. The reserve, 15 miles west of Lancaster at 15101 Lancaster Road, offers free guided public tours daily during wildflower season. The California State Parks website says: “The poppies are here! We don’t have carpets of orange yet, but we have brilliant patches starting to fill in the south facing slopes, with blinding yellow swaths of goldfields covering hillsides and along the North Poppy Loop trail.” (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)