California the Long Way

California The Long Way

Our latest trip took us back to my home state, California. As most everyone knows, California is a big place and we explored a good deal of the state from north to south. Over the course of 12 days we logged over 1,400 miles and never once left the state, although we came pretty close to Nevada. We moved from orchards and fields to volcanoes to ski resorts to deserts and major metropolises as well. There is something for every taste and every adventure in the Golden State provided you have a significant amount of time and a taste for the open, and often lonely, road.

Atlanta Airport

We started our journey, as almost always, with a drive from our home north of Atlanta to the Hartsfield-JACKSON International Airport. There is a tempest in a teapot brewing in Atlanta about some sources abbreviating the full name of the Atlanta airport to Hartsfield. Most reasonable people suspect this is done for the sake of brevity, and in some cases because it was long known as Hartsfield before the Jackson part was added. But, because this is Georgia, and Atlanta, and ultimately the United States, because Mr. Hartsfield was a white man and Mr. Jackson was a black man then when someone drops the Jackson it must become an issue of race. Personally, I seriously doubt most people ever stop long enough to consider who the airport is named for or that it is named for anyone in particular, much less make racist decisions about what they call the airport. But some will see racism in any act that doesn’t favor the minority, and I have to wonder at what point that act, in and of itself, becomes racism directed in the unusual direction. I do love to muse upon the imponderable.

Roofing Digression

As I write this, the roof on our house is being replaced due to wind damage which is common in the Southeast. And as I observe the workmen, I have to wonder who the immigration hawks think does this sort of work. For I assure you that the only language being spoken up there is Spanish and that there is nary a white, black, or any other “race” up there aside from the “White/Latino” group so loved by the Census and reviled by those who are expected to check the box. Of course, I am sure if we eliminated all immigration that SOMEONE would still replace my roof, but in what time frame, at what cost, and with what absurd labor/environmental codes and fees applied. Just wondering.   I do wish they would ask to use the bathroom instead of trying to hide back in the trees, but I guess we don’t get everything we wish for.

Sacramento Arrival

We flew out of Atlanta into Sacramento on one of the two daily non-stops Delta Airlines offers. They also service Sacramento from Minneapolis (2), Salt Lake City (5), Seattle (4), and LAX (5). All told, there are about 18 daily flights in and out of Sacramento with Delta and I was surprised that traffic is so dense, but it served us well, arriving at around 11:30am after a slightly over 4 hour flight. Hertz didn’t have the car we requested so we ended up with a Dodge Charger that we couldn’t wait to dump, which Tim was able to do in Chico, much to their delight because college students, apparently, love their Chargers. Who knew that Hertz rented to college students and that said students liked Dodge. You learn something every day.

Chico Personal History

We ended up in Chico, which is a perfectly pleasant mid-sized city in northern California with a state university providing the backbone of the cultural life while agribusiness makes up the largest part of the economy outside of the school and its support institutions. But we were there for family reasons. Chico is embedded in my family life because my Dad spent his teen years there, my Mom went to college there, met and married my Dad there, and I used to visit my grandparents there every summer for years. Later, my sister would choose to go to college there and has come full circle back to the city of her birth as the Superintendent of the schools. We had arranged to visit my sister along with my parents for a sort of informal family reunion to coincide with my parents wedding anniversary (52) along with an early Father’s Day.

New Floors

Despite the best laid plans, life intervenes and it turned out that my sister and her husband were in the midst of pulling up most of the flooring in their house so it could be replaced, a scheduling event that was completely unforeseen. It didn’t bother me a bit because I grew up in a house that was constantly under renovation so it all seemed perfectly normal to me. My sister had kindly arranged or suggested lots of activities for our stay so we knew all the options to be enjoyed. However, after a day that started at 2:30am California time, we were pretty well exhausted upon arrival so opted for food from a nearby taco truck that features amazing food completely unlike anything we can buy in Georgia and an early fall into bed.

Abbey of New Clairvaux

The next day we would drive out to the small town of Vina to visit the Abbey of New Clairvaux which features a winery. The Abbey is home to Cistercian monks who originated in Kentucky, although the order itself is French. My Mom and I don’t drink wine but Tim and my father do, so we wandered a bit about the grounds, carefully avoiding creating any temptation for the monks who might not be used to women. Mom was able, unsurprisingly, to learn a good deal about one of the monks and the others at the Abbey. Apparently the monastic life now attracts the very old and the very desperate, perhaps not mutually exclusive, with the newest members coming from sub-Saharan Africa, ostensibly for religious reasons but I suspect an element of economic refugee status is involved as well. The religious orders, especially in the Middle Ages, were a secure source of shelter and food for their residents, so even if your faith wasn’t the strongest, your desire to eat and not freeze to death might provide quite adequate motivation. For women, it was about the only route in life that didn’t involve domestic drudgery, marital rape, and frequent and frequently dangerous pregnancy. I suspect those motives are still quite real for the nuns of today, most of whom originate in the Philippines or Africa, both places where the lives of women have not changed significantly from the Middle Ages indeed. I found the place to be physically attractive if a bit odd, as would be expected, in its social expectations and practices. I am sure they have all found ways to compensate for that which is denied them through other avenues. I am certain you can figure out exactly what I mean.

We stopped at another winery in the foothills on the return drive and it was of a more familiar and realistic tone. The bright and airy facility featured a great many works by local artists and the owners were dog lovers to boot. What wasn’t to love?

Hughes Hardwoods

Another highlight attraction for me of Chico is the Hughes Hardwoods store located just minutes from my sister’s front door. They mainly deal in fine flooring but they also stock a decent selection of exotic hardwood lumber. Dad and I split the purchase of some bubinga, redheart, zebrawood, and paduak. All of it will turn into quite nice bowls and platters between the two of us. Tim and I also enjoyed shopping for some local food stuff, especially almonds, but we would also feast on cherries, plums, strawberries and blackberries, all from local producers before we left. Treats brought to me from home included several cases of olives and multiple pounds of beef jerky brought to me from Porterville via my Dad.

Family Time

On the family side of the equation, both my sister and her husband had to work on our first two days in town and they also had to devote some time to the process of removing the flooring. Despite that, however, the evenings were ours and we had a gorgeous dinner downtown to celebrate my parents’ anniversary one night and also had time outside on the patio when it was no longer mercilessly hot to just chat. And ultimately, my sister had arranged for a boat outing on Lake Almanor for the Sunday afternoon with rooms at a rustic motel for the night.

A Day on A Boat?

While Tim and I appreciated the thought and effort put into the boat concept we both had our reservations about spending six or so hours afloat on a small boat. For Tim’s part, he sunburns in about five minutes and hates the pain and inconvenience of that, to say nothing of the skin cancer risk. I was concerned when I discovered that the boat featured no bathroom facilities and I just wasn’t comfortable with hanging it over the side, so to speak, family or not. Besides, life on multiple medications is, shall we say, unpredictable and while the boat could be returned to the dock if necessary, I know from humiliating experience that sometimes an additional minute is just too long. So, while we felt pretty guilty about it, we ultimately chose to forgo the boat run and instead drove up northeast to Lassen Volcanic National Park.

Mount Lassen

Lassen National Park

Lassen National Park

I suspect that a good many people don’t realize that there are quite active volcanoes in California. Mono Lake, for example, is volcanic as is Mount Shasta. Mount Lassen is not only an active volcano but it has recently, as in recorded and photographed history on May 22, 2015, been active and it is now a National Park. Granted, if one has seen Yellowstone then the volcanic features of Mount Lassen will seem minor in comparison, but they were the first experience I had of volcanic activity when my grandparents took me up to the Park, at least two times, when I was quite young. I distinctly remember hiking the Bumpass Hell trail with my grandfather both times and being enthralled with the boiling mud pots, steam vents, and the distinct stench of hydrogen sulfide. So, this return, my second as an adult, had a tinge of nostalgia since my grandmother, Juanita Barna, Michaud when I knew her, my father’s mother, had just recently died in the foothills above Sacramento, devotedly cared for by her youngest daughter, Madeline.

East and Then West from Lassen

We left the park to the north and went further east to Susanville before turning back to the west and coming in to the Lake Almanor area through the small town of Chester. I remember Chester too from camping with my grandparents, although I don’t think we ever stayed in Chester; it was just frequently the closest town for provisions when needed, although we most often brought everything with us from Chico. Eventually, we found the place where we were to stay for the night and we discovered that rustic to my sister translated to something more like frightening to us. Tim and I are hotel wimps, I confess it right now. We thought we were roughing it when we settled on the Holiday Inn Express for an upcoming night in Bishop (we cancelled that reservation). By comparison, the Holiday Inn of any flavor would have been the height of luxury. But this location is apparently the only going place to stay on the west side of Lake Almanor and they know it, charging sky-high non-refundable rates. For reasons that I confess I was never quite clear on, the location has importance and meaning for my sister and her husband and that was reason enough.

Things Not Always According to Plan

I hate to admit it but the final evening was not an easy or a pleasant one. Family can sometimes challenge us in ways that no one and nothing else can. And, about some topics that touch too close to home for me I can be overly sensitive and not readily able to listen to opinions and experiences that contradict my own life experiences and desires. About most things, I don’t care two hoots what people believe or do in their lives as long as they don’t make it a central point of those beliefs and behaviors to tread on me and my life all the while calling it liberty or difference of opinion. I have no doubt that what I think I heard, I was primed to hear from my experiences of life and my own experiences of discrimination, blatant and subtle, especially when it is perfectly legal and authorized behavior. The details don’t matter to me anymore and I frankly am unlikely to remember them anyway, which is a pleasant side effect of encephalopathy, if there is one. A less pleasant side effect is the erosion of the pre-fontal cortex which causes, or allows, me to say things impulsively without thought or planning on occasion. This area of the brain is our socially conditioned niceness center that censors our thoughts and actions so that we remain within the bounds of what we are conditioned to think of as socially acceptable behavior. I can handle it adaptively pretty well most of the time, but when stressed by fatigue, pain, anger, or a combination of multiple stressors, I am likely to say and/or do just about anything that comes to mind. I loathe excuses, so I won’t make it one, but I love explanations for why people sometimes do things we don’t understand or approve of. Maybe the actor himself doesn’t like it or approve of it any more than anyone else does but still, it happens. What I most hate about it is that once it triggers it doesn’t stop firing for hours, many hours, meaning I will relive it, staying in a bad mental and emotional place for up to 12 hours and beyond. After it ends, the massive and deep depression and sadness at what has transpired always comes into play. It is a vicious cycle and one that I can’t halt once it starts, I can only hope to avoid it starting in the first place. Ultimately, what I know is that family is those we love unconditionally and those who love us unconditionally in return. We don’t have to agree about everything related to politics, society, or anything else, but we do have to love one another regardless because that is what it means to be a family. At least, I think so.

On the Road Early

Tim and I left early the next morning, before 6am, in part because I wasn’t sleeping anyway and also, on a more pleasant note, birds began to sing loudly about 5:30am, the moment the sun was visible so we decided to tackle what would be a long day of driving, introspection, and sadness. The route was chosen to maximize the joy of the mountains, staying on California Route 89. We had been on CA 89 for part of the journey through Lassen National Park and picked it up again right outside Lake Almanor. We drove it down to the junction with Interstate 80, where we detoured for Starbucks coffee and also briefly to the west so that Tim could officially cross over the Donner Pass. I think the basic outline of the story of the Donner Party of 1846 is known to many people, i.e. late start crossing the Sierra Nevada, early and heavy snows (which California desperately misses as much as the Donner Party hated them), forcing them to overwinter in the mountains and resort to cannibalism to survive. There is a good deal more to the story, of course, and we only tend to remember the more sensational aspects. Anyhow, the pass is named for them and it was an engineering triumph to complete its construction. Tim had seen an hour-long television show about it and wanted to see it in person since we were so close.

Lake Tahoe

After the pass, we returned east and looped around Lake Tahoe, again on CA 89. Lake Tahoe is a beautiful and interesting location, especially geographically, but it is also a world famous resort area with skiing in the winter as well as summer activities based on the water. Year round attractions are centered on the casinos on the eastern side of the lake, the Nevada side, as the lake is shared between California and Nevada, with the state line essentially right down the middle of the lake. Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America. Its depth is 1,645 feet, making it the second deepest in the United States after Crater Lake. Additionally, Lake Tahoe is the sixth largest lake by volume in the United States at 122,160,280 acre-feet, behind the five Great Lakes. The lake was formed about 2 million years ago and is a part of the Lake Tahoe Basin with the modern lake being shaped during the ice ages. It is known for the clarity of its water and the panorama of surrounding mountains on all sides.

Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe

Onward and Over

Good views of the lake are hard to get without entering one of the many pay to use areas sponsored by the State of California, but if you act quickly there is one excellent viewpoint that is free. We didn’t act fast enough and our views of the lake were less than ideal but we still had a good sense of it. We continued on over passes and valleys, replete with beautiful wildflowers along the way, through the smallest county of the 59 in California, Alpine County, with a total population of about 3,000. While many California counties are extremely large, some of them larger than some New England states in fact, up in the mountains where the gold rush of 1848-49 occurred, counties are much smaller. Some are so small, in fact, that to maximize federal and state funds, they act in concordance, consolidating funds and services into consortia, a behavior of cooperation that could provide lessons for many institutions both governmental and otherwise.

Ultimately, we would emerge from the top of Monitor Pass and fall down towards US-395, the route that runs the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. If you are wondering why I don’t append “Mountains” on to Sierra Nevada, the reason is because it is redundant. “Sierra” means mountains, so it would really be silly to repeat it. Tim has heard a great deal about the “granite wall” of the eastern Sierra from my mother who studied the area and wrote her Master’s thesis about part of the area, but he had never seen it before. Where the western side of the Sierra is characterized by rolling foothills gradually climbing up in altitude, the eastern side is much sharper and rises quite fast with little transition zone. This makes it quite visually stunning and imposing.

Bodie

Our first stop on the eastern side was the State Historical Park of Bodie. Bodie began as a small and rather insignificant mining camp in 1859. The town grew rapidly with the discovery of profitable gold ore by the Standard Company in 1876 and by 1879 some 3,000-5,000 people were living in town. By 1912 the town was in notable decline with the closing of the newspaper as most miners moved on to more profitable areas of mining. The mine closed officially in 1913. Some small numbers of people continued to live in town, and a post office operated until 1942, but even as early as 1912 Bodie appeared in tourist publications as a “ghost town.” Ghost town it certainly is today and it remains one of the best preserved, with curtains still literally in the windows, mattresses on bed frames, goods in the kitchen cabinets, and pool cues on the table, just as they were left all those years ago. The dry climate of the high desert has preserved most everything amazingly well. The only active restoration and recovery is of the roofs of the buildings themselves, everything else is left as it is. No buildings can be entered, but windows can be peered through and buildings without doors abound, screened only by wire fencing. Bodie is a bit of a drive off the main road on a dirt road, but I think it is well worth the effort.

Curtains in Bodie

Curtains in Bodie

Mono Lake

We passed by the rather well known sight of Mono Lake, the subject of a very active environmental crusade to save the water from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which had bought up and stolen, depending on who you ask, almost all the water along the eastern Sierra watershed. The lake is famous for the tufa formations that extend above the water level. These formations are towers made primarily of carbonate minerals, similar to, but much more porous than, travertine. The lake is highly alkaline and geologically unique. However, there frankly wasn’t much to see because the water levels were high enough to hide most of the tufa columns, leaving the lake looking pretty much like any other lake.

Mono Lake

Mono Lake

Mammoth Lakes

Our stop for the night, some 622 miles later, was to be Mammoth Lakes. While we originally intended to head for Bishop, a town some 45 miles farther south, we had switched to Mammoth Lakes on the advice of my sister who was certain that nice hotels would exist because Mammoth Lakes, in the winter months, is a massively popular ski resort. High end skiiers expect high end accomdations and Mammoth Lakes provides. While there are certainly summer activities in the region, hotels are available at a steep discount compared to the winter months and we landed a very nice room for a very nice price quite easily. It was considerably less than what the Holiday Inn Express in Bishop wanted for what had to be a much nicer place to stay.

Devil’s Postpile

It was probably all for the best that we did stop when we did for we were both exhausted by the lack of sleep, the early start, and a very long drive. We opted for a nap for a few hours before heading up the mountain to visit Devil’s Postpile National Monument. Devil’s Postpile is a relatively small example of a geological phenomenon known as basaltic columning. As very hot rock moves towards the surface of the Earth, it cools and solidifies. The most stable crystal structure happens to hexagonal so hexagonal columns form underground. Over many years, the top soil may erode, and in this case the top of the columns was subject to ice carving, leaving behind a relatively flat topped extrusion of hexagonal basalt rock columns. This phenomenon is visible on a much larger scale at Devil’s Tower in Wyoming or the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.

Devil's Postpile

Devil’s Postpile

As is the case with many National Parks and Monuments, Devil’s Postpile has adopted the shuttle bus to move people to and from the sights. We have used this system in both Zion National Park and in the Grand Canyon. In those locations shuttle use is mandatory, but in Bryce Canyon, thus far, it is voluntary as it also is in Yosemite. At Devil’s Postpile it is mostly mandatory, unless it is off season (winter) or if you arrive before or after shuttle service starts/stops. Magically, we arrived about 2 minutes after shuttle service ended, even if we did wait at a viewpoint for a few minutes. The shuttle concept makes good sense as the road down is quite steep and mostly one-lane. It wouldn’t take many cars to make it an impassable nightmare. But, when we went down, there was only one other car going with us, and maybe two coming up. It was a short and easy walk to the base of the extrusion and we enjoyed the sight. I very much wanted to go because I had driven past it several times and hadn’t stopped. Now I have.

On To the South

After a restful night, we struck out early again and headed south on US-395. We passed through Bishop which figured large and hated in my childhood. Every year I had to endure the multi-day Bishop Mule Days event which was a very much featured event for my sister. I wasn’t into horses or mules but as the younger sibling I was always dragged along and I never featured it. I remember with great joy the first year that Dad, and therefore, I, revolted and we stayed home while my sister and Mom went ahead and went. I remember it for three reasons: I didn’t have to go to Bishop and never went again until I was an adult on a camping trip, we bought our very first color television set that weekend, and there was a significant earthquake that almost brought the columns of our patio down on my head and which did damage the brick façade on the lower half of our house. It was a Memorial Day weekend to remember indeed, May 25, 1980.

Lone Pine

Next pit stop was Lone Pine. Lone Pine is just another in a string of very small towns along US-395 but to me it was always the location of my Bishop consolation prize. There was a rock shop along the main drag and I was always allowed to stop there and buy a geological specimen every year we went through on the way to or from Bishop. I’ve never forgotten that and repeated the exercise, buying two pieces of fluorite, which is a purple mineral used to create hydrofluoric acid and from that many things containing fluorine, including, amongst many other, Teflon.

Manzanar

We then stopped in at Manzanar, one of the many sites of the euphemistically known “relocation camps” in which United States citizens of Japanese descent were forcibly interned during World War II. This is part of our history as a nation that gets quite effectively glossed over and it amazes me how few people know about what we did to people who had committed no crime other than to be descended from people who were at war with us. There were few if any cases of active espionage or other support for imperial Japan from US citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, and yet people were forcibly removed from their homes and business, which were then sold without their consent and without them receiving the proceeds, strictly based on national origin of their ancestors. When the war was over and they were released, there was no apology, no reparations, no recovery of business or property.

Manzanar

Manzanar

I have, sadly, heard these actions justified by those who lived during the time. I was told that I couldn’t understand the fear that the war, especially Pearl Harbor, inspired and that it made sense because of the fear. I don’t believe we will ever know all there is to know about what happened at Pearl Harbor and why it was allowed to happen, but it made a great excuse for several actions that the American public wanted no part of initially. I think as a person old enough to remember September 11, 2001, I do understand fear and yet it never occurred to me that we should round up people who looked like those who committed those acts and incarcerate them without due process as guaranteed by the Constitution. I am also certain we will never know all that there is to know about 9/11, or the reasons it was allowed, or made, to happen, but I realize that many things contrary to the Constitution were done in reaction to September 11, which provided the perfect excuse to enact legislation written back in the 1970s. But I don’t think even the worst of those offenses, at least the ones we know about, compare to the actions against the Japanese in World War II. It wouldn’t be until President Clinton, when most of those affected were dead, that any acknowledgement would come of the wrong that was done. That was too long to wait and I think that everyone should visit sites like Manzanar, which sadly has little left to commemorate what was done there, to know and remember what happens when fear rules over reason and otherwise good people do horrible things.

Fossil Falls

Our next stop on our tour of the eastern Sierra was Fossil Falls. I first visited here with my Mom when I was quite young and it impressed me so much that I never forgot and have returned several times as an adult. These intriguing lava formations have developed over very long periods of time as a result of the action of volcanoes and water.

Red Rock Canyon and Ladies of the Evening

We continued down US 395, changing over to CA 14 to veer through Red Rock Canyon State Park, the filming location of many a western themed movie over the years. Again, if you have seen the parks in Utah this one won’t blow you away, but if you haven’t it is a good place to see, just perhaps not in June when it is blisteringly hot and windy. We crossed back over to US 395 at Cantil, passing through the modern mostly ghost towns of Garlock, Johannesburg, Randsburg, and Red Mountain. The only interesting thing about Red Mountain is that it is just barely over the county line between Kern and San Bernardino, on the San Bernardino side. Kern County, where I lived and worked for five years before coming to Georgia, and where I was in fact born, is notoriously socially conservative. The soldiers at the many military bases in Kern had to travel to Red Mountain, so the story goes, for certain services from certain women in certain facilities because the Kern authorities would run them out, but the sheer size of San Bernardino County (with an area of 20,105 square miles, San Bernardino County is the largest county in the United States by area. It is larger than each of the nine smallest states, larger than the four smallest states combined, and larger than 71 different sovereign nations) and the physical remoteness of Red Mountain allowed the business to thrive there. Or, so the story goes.

We would continue down US 395 until its junction and termination into Interstate 15, which reaches in from Las Vegas and ultimately from the Alberta border, down to San Diego. This routing was probably a mistake. For odd reasons I don’t understand, much of US 395 up in the mostly unpopulated reaches of Inyo and Mono counties has been widened into a four lane divided highway, but in the increasingly densely populated High Desert bedroom communities of San Bernardino County, it remains a two lane mess clogged with truck traffic headed to and from the interstate. It took and incredibly long time to travel the last 40 miles to the interstate. Once on the interstate it was an easy run down to CA 210 and over to Interstate 10 and out over San Gorgonio Pass down into the Coachella Valley and Palm Springs, a journey of an additional 459 miles if you were counting.

Palm Springs and Environs

Palm Springs has existed for a long time but it wasn’t until the 1950s that it really took off as a resort and retreat for the Hollywood elite. Rancho Mirage, to the south, was first “settled” by Lucy and Desi Arnaz. Many Hollywood celebrities of the day had homes of some sort in the area and today the area plays host, however unwisely, to some 123 different golf courses. The valley is also home to great poverty among the agricultural and domestic workers who service the wealthy residents and retirees of the area. While we say we go to Palm Springs, we in reality stay in Cathedral City just to the south. The two cities have grown together although they are demographically very different, with Cathedral City being the much poorer neighbor. We don’t notice the demographic differences because we stay in a resort complex and don’t venture out much.

View From My Patio

View From My Patio

Palm Springs is a very diverse city, perhaps one of the most diverse in the country. Up to 40% or more of the city identifies as GLBT and that provides an incredible draw for both retirees and tourists who are seeking a welcoming and friendly place to spend time and money as well. While sadly many GLBT people live in poverty, overall, we tend to have more readily disposable cash than the majority of the population, in part due to overall higher levels of education, advanced careers, and mostly, no children to spend our money on. Palm Springs is also home to a sizeable Jewish population. The size of the LGBT and Jewish populations are both believed to have something to do with the early and continuing popularity of the area with Hollywood professionals, especially upon retirement. Oh yes, most of the residents and the tourists in Palm Springs are older. Tim and I are almost always amongst the youngest where we stay, yet another good reason to go. Who doesn’t love being the youngest in the place when you are pushing 50?

Shopping for Socks, Underwear, and Shoes

While we spend most of our time in Cathedral City vegetating, avoiding getting sunburned on the covered patio of our two bedroom with full kitchen suite, we do get out now and again. Almost always, we will make the run up to the outlet malls at Cabazon. I am certain there is an actual town called Cabazon but I have never seen it. To me, Cabazon is just the outlet malls and the Indian casino. Really, you can’t miss them. We always hit the UnderArmour shop for that is the only underwear either of us can stand to wear and Tim always wants new plastic sandals, which he will quickly destroy, from the Addidas store. I also was pleased to find replacements for my bright neon ankle socks! Beyond that and a Starbucks we ignore the rest of the stores. But we always stock up at the Crazy Coyote Taco Stand on the way out, featuring just about the best chile verde I have ever had the pleasure of eating. Our other eating standbys include Thai and also Vietnamese pho noodles. We have also recently discovered the joys of Sherman’s Jewish Deli. Truly, not to be missed, and the cakes, mazel tov!

Joshua Tree National Park

New for us this time was a long discussed trip out into Joshua Tree National Park. I grew up familiar with Joshua Trees, not a tree at all but a type of yucca plant, that grows on Walker Pass in the high Mojave Desert. They are strange looking if you are not used to them and you shouldn’t get too close because those spines are actually used to lethal effect by a species of shrike that lives amongst them and stabs prey to death on the spines. They are not pleasant when sticking in your skin. We drove around to the north entrance, near Twenty-Nine Palms, no, I don’t know why 29 instead of some other number, home to a large Marine base and essentially nothing else. At the park visitor’s center I bought a seed kit to grow my own Joshua Tree. I will update you all on its growth over the next hundred or so years; they don’t grow fast. The Center also featured some interesting cacti growing and even blooming. Yep, cacti, like most plants, do bloom every once in a great while. The entrance to the Park wasn’t enthralling if you are at all familiar with the desert but the scenery rapidly improves with massive rock formations, higher elevations and fantastic views on clear days down to the San Andreas Fault (one of hundreds in California and not the one which has caused recent activity, others are capable of being deadly too) and the Salton Sea. What the park best enshrines is the transition from the high elevation Mojave Desert to the low elevation Colorado Desert, part of the much larger Sonoran Desert stretching down into Mexico. It might all look just like desert to the unfamiliar but if you look a bit closer and notice what does, and does not, live in each, you will find the differences. Higher elevations don’t necessarily equate to mountains. In the West, basins, very flat and very dry, can also be situated a high elevations. You might be tempted to think they are low elevation because they are flat, but they are not at all. To help myself explain the topography of California, I finally bought a three-dimensional map of California so that Tim can run his fingers over the landscape we travel most often to better understand what he is traversing in a car. For flat states, such as Georgia mostly is, such a map is relatively useless, but for a state as varied topographically as California is, it works wonders.

Joshua Tree National Park

Joshua Tree National Park

We reentered the Coachella Valley around the town of Indio. Indio is the center of the thriving date growing industry in California, the source of over 90% of the nation’s dates (I simply can’t imagine where else they would grow them). I love dates! I bought about 50 pounds of them from Shield’s Date Farm. I could buy this many because dates freeze beautifully and keep forever. You can even eat them frozen because the high sugar content keeps them from getting very hard. Delicious!

Back to LAX

After six nights at the resort it was, sadly, time to return home. I say sadly, but only partly because we were both getting antsy to get back to the puppies and regular life after being gone for almost two weeks. The trip back into LAX is a bit convoluted in order to avoid the worst of the traffic but the 142 miles moves fairly quickly with HOV lanes and reverse commute directions of travel. We arrived in plenty of time, which was a good thing because we had to park the car, move all six items we were checking, including boxes of olives, wine, and wood, to the Delta Sky Priority counter, then return the car, then take the shuttle back, and then brave TSA screening. We have Pre-Check which makes the process so much easier but on the way out TSA determined that I had “explosive” trace on my hands and both my bags. This necessitated calling the “explosive expert” (seriously, that is what his badge said) over to talk to me. I mentioned touching waxed wood turning blanks before leaving and he gave a very cursory check to my bags and let me go. It could have been a nightmare but it was all handled pretty quickly and very courteously. In line with my belief that we should provide compliments as much, or more, than we provide criticism, especially in today’s review driven society, I sent TSA a real love note, thanking them for making the experience as pleasant and efficient as it could be expected to be.

Sky Club Experience and Flight Home

Delta continues to revamp and enhance the LAX Sky Club experience and it really is turning out amazing. The new food selections are plentiful and delicious. The well cocktails are very upscale with Stoli being the WELL vodka for example, with other premium brands such as Grey Goose available for a charge of $7 (well drinks remain free, the only airline club to have free cocktails). Everyone was lovely, except for an outraged woman who lectured the counter staff because all three sinks in the Ladies were running unstoppably. She ranted about water wastage, and she is right to be concerned, but wrong to not understand that the ladies at the front counter are not plumbers, that they had called the appropriate people and that was the end of what they could do. Attacking them personally served no purpose.

LAX Sky Club

LAX Sky Club

The return flight was short and uneventful. Despite the lie flat beds the flight really wasn’t long enough to sleep much. Compounding that was the very large woman across the aisle from me who snored loudly enough to overcome the drone of the engines. Ultimately, I had to get up and find earplugs in my overhead bag. We arrived on time, retrieved our bags in less than the guaranteed 20 minutes, and were home in about two hours from landing time, which was quite good. Everyone was happy to be home and we took care of the absolutely essential requirements before collapsing in a family nap.

Home Again!

While the trip was physically, and occasionally emotionally, exhausting, it was in the end all worth the effort. We connected with family and we explored new parts of the state of California all while returning to familiar and loved places as well. California is an extremely varied physical and demographic landscape with much to discover and we look forward to returning to see new places and having new adventures. Next stop, New York City and onward to Canada!