A roundabout trip to Death Valley and back: post 2

Americana, Death Valley, Photography, Travel

Mojave sign-3515

We turned left towards Trona and, after a few minutes, passed a recreation vehicle area. This is an area where people who want to come to the desert to rip the shit out of it with their motorcycles and 4x4s – known as off road vehicles (ORV) – can just drive around. I don’t know the details, but the rules seem to be that you can drive anywhere with anything.

Mojave vehical rec area-3520

Giving both the TreeHuggers and ORVs separate playgrounds is one of those things that the government really seems to do well. Everybody is pretty happy playing in the desert. Speaking of which, when people think desert plants, they think cactus, but most plants in the desert are not cactus. The preferred survival strategy seems to be Wait around for rain, bloom and produce seeds as soon as possible, get the seeds dispersed, and wait around for the next rain. Which is why, after a couple of well timed rains, the desert will be filled with carpets of flowers. Cactus, and alot of other plants, honker down and sort of hibernate between rains. So, while they can take harsh conditions, they can’t take really harsh conditions like annuals.

Mojave vehical rec area Opuntia-3522
But, when the conditions are right, they can be very happy, like this Opuntia basilaris living between tracks at the Wagon Wheel ORV Area.

Further down the road, on the way to Trona, is the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake at Ridgecrest. China Lake is a misnomer, there is no lake there – atleast not what we would call a lake. I guess it is called a lake to sort of justify having a Navy Base in the middle of the desert. I am not sure why the Navy has a base there except that it is left over from WWII when the military grabbed every piece of available land and, now, they don’t want to let go.

Trona, on the other hand is actually on a lake, Searles Lake. The lake sits in a shallow basin and is usually very shallow although it used to be over 600 feet deep. Now what is left is a couple of hundred feet deep lake bed of dried salts and minerals that are being mined by the Searles Valley Minerals Company and Trona is, more or less, it’s company town.

Searles Lake-3541

I would like to be snarky about Trona but over the years, I have become sort of protectively fond of it.  When I first saw Trona, the mine – factory? – was run by Kerr-McKee and it was, by far, the worst place I have ever seen. As an aside; I hold the position that Kerr-McGee is the most evil company in the world and that was before I saw Silkwood. Kerr-McGee sort of makes the PG&E of Erin Brockovitch look like the Red Cross; end aside.

It seemed, then, that Kerr-McGee dug up the dried salts and minerals and blew them in the air – apparently for the fun of it. The whole area was covered with a gray layer of salt and mineral fallout. Everything, the rundown buildings, the dirt football field at the highschool, the road and all the trucks on them, everything. Now, with Searles Valley Minerals Company replacing Kerr-McGee, Trona is close to infinitely better than it used to be.

Sure, the football field is still dirt but the school buildings are newly painted and, most importantly, the dust is gone. Cars are shinny, buildings are clean, and there is a nifty shinny pipey thing across the dried lake. The town looks alive.  It is also worth keeping in mind that, without the Tronas of the world, we wouldn’t have computers or iPhones or the Hubble telescope.

West end @ Searles Lake-3535

Shinny pipe @ Searles Lake-3552

The rest stop looks pretty dismal, but not if you had seen the old Trona; and the new information kiosk has a good map of the area and real information. Although, I have to admit, the Biocarb® is a little creepy.

Rest stop @ Searles Lake-3557
Info @ Searles Lake-3559
Biocarb @ Searles Lake-3562

From Trona – at the upper left of the map below – our plan was to drive to Death Valley via a couple of old, dirt – rock? – roads over, first, the Slate Range, and, then, the Panamint Range ending near the small blue square at the bottom mid-right of the Google map. Double click to get it large enough to read.

Trona to Death Valley

Continued here

 

 

A roundabout trip to Death Valley and back

Uncategorized

Last Thursday, late in the day, we left to drive to Death Valley. The weather forecast was pretty dismal, so we decided to take our time driving there. The choice was driving to Mojave down the 5 – OK, I give up, I am going to start adding a the to the freeways to identify them as freeways, southern California style, so the 5 it is –  or driving to Bakersfield down the 101 and then crossing over the coast range at Highway 58.

We chose the 101 and 58. I had been on 58 a month ago and loved it, but I had only been as far as the Corrizo Plain. It turns out that 58, through the Coast Range, is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde road. Before and up to the Corrizo Plain, 58 wanders through oak covered hills with small, picturesque, ranches; after Corrizo, 58 goes through the Midway-Sunset oil fields. It was the end of the day and the sun was setting in an ominous sky which gave the oil fields an extra mordoresque oomph.
West side of Highway 58-3479

East side of Highway 58-3483

The next day, we were up early – for us – and headed over Tehachapi Pass into the Mojave Desert.

Tehachapi_pass

Just like the map show, everything changes from green to brown as we climbed up out of the Central Valley – or, The Great California Central Valley as we were taught as kids; and it should be called great: it is the largest flat place in the United States – and enter the Mojave Desert. Right at the pass, the wind farms have a lot more windmills than the last time we came over the pass. Each one is much bigger and they were all operating. As an aside; it is sort of strange that on the other side of the Coast Range, all the old windmills used to pump water have been replaced with photovoltaic cells to drive electric pumps; end of aside.

Tehachapi Pass windmills-3488

On the other side of the pass, the landscape opens up to the Mojave Desert. Deserts have personalities – the Arizona Desert (Sonora) is sort of a cowboys and Indians desert; Nevada, sagebrush and wild horses; the Mojave, Repoman and flying saucers, Charlie Manson, and -it turns out – spaceflight. In the distance is the gateway to the desert – the town, using the term very loosely – of Mojave.

Tehachapi Pass view to Mojave-3495

The Town of Mojave is an interesting place. Because it is dry and close to the – former? – aircraft production and research center of Los Angeles, Edwards Airbase, and a rocket testing range; it is the center for alot of airplane related nonsense. That is nonsense to me, but probably not to the guys doing it. This is where the first non-stop, non-refueling, round the world flight started and ended. This is where Paul Allen’s SpaceShipOne took off and landed.

SpaceShipOne

This is where Branson’s SpaceShipTwo is built. It is the airport – now called a Spaceport –  and, presumably, if you book a flight into space; this is where you will take off and, presumably again, land.

SpaceShipTwo

It is also a graveyard for discarded jets that may, or may not, be recycled into what we used to call the third world.

Mojave airplanes-3505

Beyond Mojave, the desert gets increasingly mountainous with vast valleys and iconic endless roads diminishing into a perspective lesson. We came from a road on the right and actually turned left towards Trona where we plan on leaving the paved road. If you double click on the photo, you can read the sign.

Mojave sign-3515
To be continued….

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Seeing “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and thinking about New Stories

Current Affairs, Film, Television

T1larg.lisbeth.yellowbird

A couple of nights ago, we saw "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" with Laura Atkins and Neil. It is a Swedish movie with lots of subtitles. It is a hack story with lots of gore, a horrific rape scene – two rape scenes, I guess, depending on how you count them – and shot in Rembrandt lighting minus two f stops. I heartily recommend it.

It got me thinking. Why is this a hack story? because I have seen it before? Several times?  This is a story of Buffy Summers  and River Tam, it is the story of any woman in any Luc Besson film. Or, as far as that goes, like the Marine Lioness Program . Then I started thinking What if it isn't a hack story, but a new female archetype?

Mc lioness5

It is an archetype of a young woman as the most powerful person in the
Universe of the story.

Buffy Summers is all that is between Sunnydale and the hoard of
Vampires that will destroy the world. There are men who, maybe, can help her – often
not very well, atleast, compared to her – but she is the only one that can save the world. The men are there to hold the structure, but Buffy holds the power.

Part of the Buffy story is that she is both damaged and vulnerable and River Tam even more so. Mathilda, in Luc Besson's The Professional is incredibly vulnerable and damaged but, in the end, she is more powerful than Leon, her protector.

I think that this is a new myth. A New Story. Granted, my education in myths is preeeety shaky, but I can't think of a Grimm's Tale or a Greek Myth where the female is young, vulnerable, and straight up, kickass, powerful.

And, like any archetype, it is coming out in stories because it exists in the real world. One place, for sure, the archetype is starting to manifest itself is the Marines Lioness Program. The Marines are now training women to go on patrols because they can interact with the local women in Afghanistan and Iraq. In other words, they can go where the men can't. They have power the men don't.