Our Just Deserts….

Heading East from the coast we passed Castroville, home of Fidel and Artichokes (well, one of the two anyway) Vast fields of plants with workers cars lining the edges like shiny hedgerows in the hot sun. What a job eh, in such temperatures, feeding the world with a vegetable so difficult to eat! Tasty though, in a dip! Driving through other towns like Hollister, of the fancy clothes, we are arrived at Prunedale, of the… yes, you guessed it, prunes! Early settlers planted plum trees and dried them. Eventually, after such an agricultural journey, made special by the fading daylight on the yellow harvested fields, we arrived at Pinnacles National Park. Two lots of chatty neighbours, 6 Californian Condors above, roosting turkey vultures in the trees behind, and a partridge in a pear tree, we eventually got ourselves set up in the dark, 2 hours after arriving! A loan of a copy of ‘The New Yorker’ had some brilliant cartoons! Some like minded campers!

Pinnacles NP is one of the quieter ones, an ancient crack in the earth, in the San Andreas Fault zone. Two faults, the Chalone Creek and the Pinnacles butted up against each other (it’s always someones fault isn’t it!) to create a diverse landscape of steep craggy cliffs and towers in one direction (Pinnacles) and a flatter rolling hills environment in the other where an inland underground waterway was created. We cycled to the trailhead and took a hike to Bear Gulch Caves and the wider area beyond. Clambering through the caves was fun, squeezing through gaps between the fallen boulders that created it. The reward at the top was a beautiful mountain top lake. The landscape was very arid, lots of red rock formations and erosions that created a kind of folds in a curtain effect in the rocks. There were several mule deer around the campsite, Jigsaw thought about it then backed off (see her blog spot).

A long drive took us to Bakersfield, across Californian yellow grassland prairies and rolling hills. We had a treat, a roadside Golden Eagle close to the road, photo of it taking flight. It was ginormous. After swathes of countryside we came over a hill to nodding donkeys and industry at Coalinga, quite a surprise! Passing through the town we ended up in Pistachio Central, what seemed to be miles and miles of Pistachio trees and some pretty nifty looking harvesting gear. The only break in the trees was ‘Pleasant Valley State Prison’, I’ve never heard of such a daft name for a place to be incarcerated. It was a massive place, must be a lot of squirrels locked up in there. The only event of the day was a ‘Hot Rod’ driver, parked right by us, reversing his pride and joy into another car. Having witnessed it, he seemed very upset, although I’m not sure his glazed eyes were tears, if you get my drift. The following morning we watched the partial eclipse (tricky to photograph, Nick used a serious filter!)

Heading into The Mojave Desert was a spectacular affair for our first serious desert! Heading to Red Rock Canyon for a couple of nights we were on our way early as we’d watched the eclipse from the campsite. The route finished off the agriculture zone before a long slow climb up, over 3000ft, out of the valley floor into the Mojave Desert. It was very dry, we had a our first Joshua Tree’s. Higher, it was actually very green, a lot of trees and cacti in that regard but it was barren. The masses of solar panels and wind turbines broke up the ‘green beige haze’ of it.

Approaching Red Rock Canyon though was a sight to behold, red rock, white dried river beds and blue skies. The camping was the most unique we’ve experienced, nestled in the fluted rock formations from wind and rain erosion. The colours where fantastic, layers of white, pink, red and brown, like a fancy patisserie layer cake, below a hard lava flow caprock (like Hoodoos) It was great to explore on the bikes and try and take it all in, impossible! The visitor centre was playing ‘Radar Men From the Moon’ on a loop, it was filmed there.

The Mojave desert is 48k sq km, nearly as big as England (50k) so travelling through takes a while. The desert is endless, the roadsides yellowed by the Desert Senna plants’ flowers. The landscape appears green from the road but higher, the scrub plants, fighting for water, are well spaced and dotted in the beige earth. Passing ‘Space Port’ where Mr Branson used to try his ego hand at Space Travel, and Edwards Air Force Base with its B52 on show, we got to a town called Helendale (they grow Helens there!) This was the start of our Route 66 stint. Before doing so however we found a quirky place known as ‘Elmer Long’s Bottle Tree Ranch’. A fantastical forest of home made trees adorned with bottles and other paraphernalia. The story is that Elmer inherited 1000’s of bottles from his collector father and not being a recycler he decided to create an art installation, reimagining junk, in the desert. He’s now passed, so its future is uncertain, glad we got to enjoy it.

Continuing to Barstow on Route 66, running parallel to its nemesis, Interstate 15, we were coming across all kinds of sights. The billboards especially, my favourite being ‘Botox was taboo, now nobody raises an eyebrow’! Barstow had a few old buildings, very much of the 66 days. We love the era’s iconic road signs from the hey day. You don’t see such fabulous design these days. Mainly though, Barstow was predominantly now a new, just off the Interstate pit stop for fast food. We passed through and headed to Calico Ghost Town for the night, spooky eh?! In reality it was kitsch not spooky, an overdone and rebuilt ghost town, not much authenticity other than its history.

Peggy Sue’s 50’s Diner was equally kitsch but fun. Waiting for a table for breakfast we were herded into the tacky gift shop where no doubt many part with their money on all kinds of junk. Why would someone want to buy false eyelashes and a Beatles mug there, I don’t know. Hoping to bump into Paul maybe and want to look their best? The place was adorned with faded Hollywood tat, and few signed photos of who knows who. Who doesn’t love memorabilia eh?! The USA isn’t that good at veggie breakfasts (unless in the hip cities with plenty of $) and we discovered Peggy wasn’t that good at them either. How can a vegetable omelette have no flavour? We didn’t have a lot of choice! The waitresses in their faux pink ’50’s diner pinny’s’ were ‘tip smiley’ enough and it was an experience!

The Liberty Sculpture Park is a fairly new outdoor art installation themed on ‘anti communism’ running alongside the I40 in the desert sands. Numerous structures on that theme, it was fascinating. No surprise but the sculpture ‘CCP Virus’ built in 2021, caused great panic in a certain country and was thus burned down. A new and more robust one is in its place! You’ll get the gist from the pics and probably a sense of the land owners nationality. It wasn’t lost on us that the US Army Logistics Corp had a base next door.

On the Mojave Desert magical mystery tour we were on, or sections of old route 66 to be exact, we had a stop at the famous “Bagdad Cafe” of the film. A fabulous throwback cafe where the film was made. Unchanged and dilapidated it was a genuine gem, no kitsch, just charm. The bloke behind the counter was chatty and insisted on a mix of europop and U2 on his jukebox for our pleasure! Don’t ask! From there, we continued through the desert on I40 with Ry Cooder’s ‘Paris Texas’ on the music box, to a campsite with a great pool for a swim at 8pm to cool off in the desert heat, it was 36°C still!

Beige and Sage is a good description of the Mojave Desert landscape, there’s no avoiding it as we headed to Needles. Having a little wander we stumbled across their town museum, not inviting from the outside, even though it was an old Penney’s department store, but inside a fascinating collection of historical items, much celebrating the Santa Fé railroad legacy. We learned about ‘Harvey Houses’ from an enthusiastic volunteer. These were where train travellers rested on their journeys, often where the trains refuelled and changed crews, every 100 miles. Opposite the museum was El Garces railroad depot where once, there was a fabulous hotel and restaurant, one of the greatest ‘Harvey Houses’, built in 1908. Fred Harvey really was a pioneer in rail travel, moving from station facilities to buffet cars, which really opened up the West to travel and settlement. Some of his architectural designs influenced the National Park buildings of today. From there we crossed the Colorado River and into the next state, Arizona.

JIGSAW Blog Spot I’ve quite enjoyed the deserts, lots of wide open spaces for me and lots of coloured sand for me to roll in. The Tall One and The Feeder One just love it when I do that and I like to keep them happy so do it a lot! It is also quite handy as they stop taking pictures of me to go on InstaCat for my followers, who prefer me to be squeaky clean with a filter. The only time they’ve been really angry with me though is when I thought it would be fun to go in between giant boulders. They had me on a shorter lead after that…. bad times 🙂 I don’t know why they think I’m so stupid, I didn’t bother trying to make friends with mule deer!