There are not many people that are interested in the land snails of the Caribbean Islands, but those that are, really are. Stephrn J Gould as remembered – probably badly – by me.

Michele and I drove to Stove Pipe Wells the other day, and then we drove back home. I think we were tired of winter and wanted out of the cold, if even for a day. It was a glorious 95° at Stove Pipe with a clear blue sky.

Stove Pipe Wells is a named place, officially listed in GNIS, the Geographic Names Information System. A named place is one step smaller than a census-designated place, which is one step smaller than an official town. It is at sea level, at the bottom of a road that drops about 5,000 feet, down an alluvial fan in an almost straight line. It is near the middle of the enlarged Death Valley National Park but at the edge of the geological Death Valley. Stove Pipe Wells really is just a motel across the road from a general store/gas station, with a newish Ranger Station in a sort of trailer/temporary building. Its only charm is that it is charmless. When we got there, the Ranger Station was closed for the evening.

Michele had popped an extra ten bucks for a “Dune View” room, putting us in the building farthest from the restaurant. Dune view is pushing it somewhat, but, from the covered porch in front of our room, the dunes were distantly visible. The Dune View room also put us next to three pairs of fellow desert rats. When people ask me about Death Valley and how long they should plan to be there, I tell them, “Two hours is too long, and two weeks is not enough.” Our fellow travelers all fit in the two weeks is not enough category. Like us, they had been coming here for years, and, also like us, they used to camp out and were now spending the night inside at the Stove Pipe Wells Hotel.

Michele went down to the local Saloon, only four buildings away, and came back with an Old Fashion for herself and a Manhattan for me so we could join our neighbors in an ad hoc cocktail hour overlooking the distant dunes. I had hoped to pick up a couple of tips on new, to me, roads and walks but we had all been to the same places so it was a cocktail hour of trading stories. It was a cocktail party with strangers, all madly in love with the same place, a warm and friendly get together with old friends, talking about old times. I enjoyed the hell out of myself.

The Bay Area has been rainy and cold this year, with an emphasis on cold. The constant rain has made everything green, which is great to see after years of looking at dry, exhausted hills, but the sky has been low and grey. Since early February, almost every day has felt like winter. I’ve reacted by complaining and hibernating. But, and this sort of surprised me, the natural world didn’t hibernate; it just acted almost normal.

In some cases, hyper-normal might be a better description.

I love California, irrationally so, I know. My daddy loved California – it was as close to God as he ever got – and I think he passed that on to me. California is so big and so varied. On the San Francisco coast, the Sierras mean watershed, but they are also a wall, putting a big part of California in a rain shadow.

This fascinating topo map is in a lovely building, the Eastern Sierra Interagency Visitor Center, that is new to us even though it has been there for almost twenty years. The interagency part is sort of interesting and a result of funds coming from the Federal Government – US Forest Service, National Park Service, and BLM – State Agencies, and the notorious City Of Los Angeles Department Of Water And Power. The Center is designed by Marcy Wong Donn Logan Architects and built by Atherton Construction LLC. Marcy Wong et al. are from Berkeley; in this case, they probably didn’t displace any local architects. Atherton Construction LLC seems to build only for the Federal Government.

On our first night – of only two – we stayed in Lone Pine so I could see the Sierras full of snow in the morning light. We had dinner at a seldom open French restaurant in the booming town of Independence, a census-designated place of about 670 people (up by 95 souls from ten years earlier). Michele had the Lamb Shank a La Gasconaise which she very much enjoyed and I had an OK French Onion Soup with a nice salad .

The next morning , I got up earlier than Michele and drove north then east past the abandoned airfield that used to support Manzanar. Looking back at the bright white Sierra Nevada escarpment , it looked like The Wall from Game of Thrones stretching both north and south as far as I could see. The Owens Valley was warm – T-shirt temperature warm – even early in the morning, but the grass and shrubs were still brown and the trees were still leafless. It seemed like an inhospitable place and the remains of Manzanar made its location especially cruel.

During WWII, the United States Government imprisoned about 110,000 Americans who were of Japanese ancestry, I don’t think they were even arrested, they were just rounded-up and imprisoned. Manzanar Relocation Center – and I’m not sure that is the real name, now it is just called Manzanar Historic Site but Manzanar Forced Relocation Center or Manzanar Concentration Camp would be more accurate – was “home” to about 10,000 of those Americans.

On the way home, we drove back to 395 and then south to the Red Rock Canyon Recreation Area which the LA Times said had good flowers.

It did.