Category Archives: California

Mojave National Preserve: a couple of sand dune shots

California, Camping, Photography

A funny thing happened when Ed and I went on our morning walk, my knee kept getting sorer and stiffer. It got worse as we were hanging out after the walk. It took me a while to figure out that I had an attack of gout. While we were walking, I thought my knee was just getting tired, but, by the time we got to the sand dunes, I could barely bend it enough to get in and out of Ed’s truck. So, what I had thought would be an afternoon of frolic in the dunes, turned out to be an afternoon of dragging my leg around near the truck.  Still, the dunes were at their best in the fading light and I did get a couple of shots.

 

 

On the road to Las Vegas, a layover day in Mojave National Preserve

Cactus & Succulents, California, Photography

Our first night in Mojave National preserve, we went to bed about ten PM so we would be ready to get up early. About one o’clock in the morning, it started to rain. Rain may be over dramatizing it, a few isolated rain drops started falling. This has happened to me several times camping out in the desert and, every time, it soon stopped. My first thought was to ride it out but, after about a minute – it is hard to tell accurate time in the dark, at one o’clock, with heavy cloud cover;  it could have been less, probably not more – I got up, threw my ground cloth and sleeping mat into the back of Ed’s truck and climbed into the cab with my damp sleeping bag.

It was warm, so I went back to sleep. At about three o’clock, when I woke up, the sky was clear and I was uncomfortable sleeping sitting up so I got out, took my ground cloth and sleeping mat out of the truck, laid out my bag, and went back to sleep. All in all, I was probably awake for ten minutes and was ready to go when the sun came up. I am still sort of amazed at how painless the whole experience was.

After a quick breakfast of Kellogg’s Super K and no tea or coffee – because we didn’t have a stove – we set out to explore. I first went to the area the year after I fell in love with the great California desert in April of 1977.

As an aside, Alan Cranston was then a California Senator and was pushing for a national park in the area. The problem was that the other Senator was always a Republican and the rule of the day – I don’t know if it is official or unofficial – was that both Senators had to agree to make it a park and the Republicans didn’t want to. Shortly after Dianne Feinstein became Senator, giving the state two Democratic Senators, the Mojave National Preserve was established, in 1994, along with the change – and enlargement – of Death Valley from a National Monument to a National Park. The Preserve is administered by the U.S. National Park Service and is located in California about three hours south of Las Vegas which was very handy for us. The Preserve is about the same size as Delaware at 1.6 million acres but with a lot less people (although with railroad tracks running through it and lots of power lines, only about half is designated wilderness). But there are three major mountain ranges; some great, 600-foot-high, sand dunes; several volcanic cinder cones with lava flows; and a couple of dry lakes. End aside.

We planned on exploring two areas, the Hole in the Rock area of the Providence Mountains in the morning and the Kelso Dunes in the late afternoon. On the way to Hole in the Rock, I was a little surprised at how many inholdings there were and how used up the land seemed. People have probably been running and over grazing cattle here for over a hundred years which may help to explain why the Republican Senators were against establishing a park.

.We did see more flowers than I expected, however, including some nice  orange mallows – Sphaeralcea ambigua – which I think is related to the marsh mallow

and our friends, the same Echinocereus that we enjoyed near our campsite

but my favorite plant that we ran into was Salvia dorrii – desert sage – with its balls of purple flowers each with tiny purple orchids growing out of them

When we got to  the Hole in the Rock visitor center, I was reminded – again – how good government architecture is. Not just in the big, expensive buildings like the Federal Building in San Francisco (not my picture)

but in cheap, small buildings, tucked away behind the mountains, in the desert; just fitting in perfectly with its solar panels – solar photovoltaic panels? – mounted on cheap, concrete, highway dividers.

We spent the late morning walking a couple of trails in the area and it almost felt like we were walking through botanical gardens.

Then it was back to the Visitor Center to have lunch in the shade of the covered porch.

On the road to Las Vegas

Around home, Cactus & Succulents, California, Camping, Photography

Monday morning, we got up pretty much with the sunrise and got going. It was easier and quicker than we had planned – we didn’t bring a stove which wasn’t planned but did speed up the mornings – and we were on the road out of the Carrizo Plain by seven AM. The Carrizo Plain is a large graben in the middle of the coast range. The San Andreas fault runs through it – actually, I guess, it is caused by the fault – like a zipper.

We camped just off the road – on the left side of the fault, on the Pacific Plate – in the picture above but, on the ground, everything looks pretty flat and we wouldn’t know – without being told – that one end of the road is on the Pacific Plate and the other on the North American Plate. Behind us, in the picture below  is the Trembler Range – great name! – and over it, past a few wildflowers blooming, is the San Joaquin Valley where they are still pumping out oil after over a hundred years. But first, we had to backtrack past the community center of the pseudo town just north of the Carrizo Plain. The picnic tables offer a great view of a future, sun powered, electric plant.

The it was just a matter of beating our way east – past Bakersfield, Tehachapi, Mojave, and Barstow – until we got to the Mojave National Preserve. I am not sure what a National Preserve is compared to a National Park except that a Preserve allows hunting – hunting what, here, I am not sure – but the Mojave National Preserve does have a heavy duty set of railroad tracks going through the middle and a lot of in-holdings. Our first stop was the Preserve headquarters at Kelso to get a couple of suggestions on camping spots.

Then it was up to Granite Pass at about 4,000 feet to find a legal camping spot. In Death Valley National Park, we can camp almost anywhere as long as we are three miles off the paved road; at Mojave, we had to camp where there was a fire ring. At DV, we can’t have ground fires and, at Mojave, we can (in the ring, presumably). I prefer the DV system because it spreads the campers out  and there are no overused fire rings. But the area was nice and, at 4,000 feet, we were starting to run into Junipers.

We spent the late afternoon wandering around, looking at blooming plants – including several Echinocereus engelmannii and a cute little echeveria type plant (maybe a   Dudleya saxosa) – and admiring the round, exfoliating, granite, boulders as the setting sun turned them orange.

College Daze

Americana, California

 

Last Saturday, my Little Brother, Edwin, his mom, and I went to San Francisco State for their Sneak Preview Open House. Edwin has been accepted at SF State but has not yet decided to go there so this was a good chance for him to see the lay of the land. I had taken two psychology classes at SF State, in 1966, so I considered myself somewhat of an expert. Well, I, at least,  knew how to find the University, but, it turns out that is about all I knew.

Surprisingly, much has changed since 1966. It is much larger – I think, at least it feels larger than I remember – with an enrollment of about 25,000 and there are a lot of new buildings including a stunning new library.

What else has changed is the general tenor. When I went there – using the term went there in the very loosest sense – San Francisco was the center of the counter culture movement. Cal Berkeley especially, but also SF State were major engines of change. This was the time when protesting students were firehosed on the stairs of San Francisco City Hall for protesting HUAC1  hearings; this was the time of the start of the Free Speech Movement – about a year after Mario Savio was arrested for saying fuck in public – this was two years before the Summer of Love in the Height Ashbury. This was one year after – as the official history of SF State says, brags really – that the Psychology Department’s Psychedelic Research Institute is inaugurated to test the creative power of LSD. Subjects are asked to bring with them professional projects on which they’ve been working; while taking LSD under the auspices of the Institute, one man solves a major design problem of Stanford’s linear accelerator, and another subject manages to complete a set of plans for a shopping center that he’d been commissioned to design.

As an aside. Less than a year before I took those two psychology classes, I had been a sergeant in the United States Army. I don’t remember it being much of a culture shock. End aside.

I want to say that San Francisco State is a more conservative place now, but, in many important ways, it really isn’t. The world has changed. What was radical then is pretty average now. I hope that Edwin decides to go to SF State, it has a great past that it looks like it is building on.

1 House Un-American Activities Committee.

Easter in Death Valley

California, Camping, Death Valley

Easter morning, we all slept in and then after a traditional Easter breakfast of instant oatmeal, we went for an Easter hike. The plan was to drive to the end of the Hole in the Wall Road and then hike up to the mysterious Red Amphitheatre. We started by hiking up an intimate side canyon to a hill overlooking a large fan that spilled out of a open valley behind the nearby ridge. Along the way, we saw lots of fossils and probably the only blooming Mojave Aster – Xylorhiza tortifloria –  in the park (it was a very dry year).

 

Also along the way, my beloved camera started acting up with the shutter not firing or staying open too long. As we walked, I went through the five stages of grief: first was denial – well, maybe this is a one time only failure, OK, maybe two times, three? – anger – shit! this can’t be happening, what is wrong with this stupid camera – bargaining – maybe if I turn it off and let it cool down, maybe if I change the battery – then depression which was pretty short and, finally, acceptance – well, this is an incredible place and the weather is great; I’ll just put my camera away and enjoy the trip. We soon stopped in the shade and had a leisurely Easter Lunch while I returned to bargaining by turning the camera off and then back on to get a shot.

When we got back to camp, I tried several shots of Gina and Courtney in their Easter finery but my camera was committing Hara-Kiri before my eyes.

 

After much Lightroom work when I got back home, I was able to semi save one shot.

Then acceptance set in. On Easter Monday – Egg Nyte – we spent the morning hiking in the badlands below our campsite. In the afternoon, we went to the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes to watch the sun get low where Michele used her iPhone to get a short video.

The next day we drove home where it was raining.