California Dreamin'

Debbie's freewheeling "plans" for this trip included meeting her brother, Ken.  It turns out we're to meet him twice, since our itinerary was so flexible. We spent five days in an RV Park near his house --visitng, touring, maintaining--  then we'll pick him up in San Fransisco in a few weeks, and travel with him for a week or so.

So here are Ken and Debbie at Joshua Tree National Park. 

Not only Debbie, but the Ranger at the
Park gate also wore cold weather gear,

As usual, it seems we brought the cold weather with us. Don't you believe the song that claims "it never rains in Southern California", either!

Ken kept remarking his surprise at all the greenery here.  Of course, he'd visited this area many times in the past and says it usually is not so bountifully green.We know it doesn't look that way to you, but we're believing.

Joshua Tree NP has two main attractions, aside from desert.  The obvious one, of course, is the proliferation of Joshua Trees here.  It is said the Mormons named this species because it reminded them of praises with arms uplifted.   Okay, says John, who can sort of see that, but why Moses's successor as opposed to some other praising Biblical figure?  That remains, as yet for him, unanswered.

The second attraction here are the many, many "small" mounds of rocks.   These have nothing to do with the stuff we'd seen in Utah.  Instead, geologists say each of these piles began life far underground as a molten magma bubble rising through the deposited sandstone layers as two tectonic layers collided.  Go ahead and google which one subducted never to be seen again, in the process taking whatever fossil clues with it.

When the magma bubbles breached the surface and solidified, the sandstone washed away, while cracks in the igneous rock enabled freeze/thaw vertical splitting that ended up fracturing each lump. The result is a unique collection of piles of Nature's rubble. There are hundreds of these largeish pimples.  All we need now is some sort of giant Clearasil to eradicate this geologic acne.

John was bored rather quickly and even Ken admitted to being "rocked out" after a time of trying to "reverse fit" the big tumbled blocks on the lower ground to the spaces from which they may have been cleaved.

There were several people who took advantage of these not-quite mountains to practice their climbing skills.  (See him left on the left?)








Ken's photographic eye is always looking for a good contrast and is rather proud of this one  ==>







The Brys are too claustrophobic to walk in here, and after taking this shot from the other side, Ken admitted that he also walked around.

Yes, we know it's silly; these rocks have been here longer than we've been alive so why would they decide to crush us in the next second?  Yes... but--



Ken toured us through the Palm Springs area, as well.  We ate movie-star-priced hamburgers at "Tyler's", downtown on the Plaza for one lunch.  The next day found us at "John's Place" in Yucca Mesa for a really, really tasty (and big!) bowl of more-realistically-priced chili amid a collection of black'n'white celebrity photos on walls.  Some of them, we even recognized, like Duncan Renaldo and a young Barbara Stanwyk. Maybe you're impressed with the old movie star names we're dropping. 
Or maybe you're just too young to have watched the old Zenith, or even to have reminisced decades later when War sang, "Cisco Kid was a friend of mine".

Our welcome to California was less than desired.  Not Ken's fault.  First off, Mom Nature heralded our departure from Arizona with a Haboob, a wicked windstorm that threatened literally to blow our RV off the road.  Fighting the wheel for two hours was about as much as either Debbie or John could handle at a time.  In some flat open desert areas, the wind blew rivers of sand across the interstate (like a Michigan winter storm with dry snow; we know you've seen that) and raised obscuring dust clouds. We're calling that a tan-out.

Then, approaching the state line, we saw the speed limit drop from 70 to 55 -to 45 -to 35 -to 25... Then, "All Vehicles Must Stop for Inspection".  All.  Not just the commercial carriers.  All: cars, motorcycles, vacationing RVs.  "This is still America, right?" asked John of no one in particular. "We don't have to show our papers just to travel between states, yes?" 

"California is its own little reality," rejoined Debbie.   Remember, this is the state with the most reversed federal appeals court in the nation.**   Approaching the "inspection booth" at a slow crawl, John sees the uniformed official inspector waving him to come forward.  When we stopped, the inspector wordlessly kept waving us to move on, obviously irritated that we had obeyed the signs.  What did he "inspect" anyway?  What was accomplished aside from angering visitors?

Next, we are greeted with a full dollar price hike per gallon of diesel fuel above Arizona's.  John's brother, whom we hope to meet in another six weeks, writes that "The gov signed a 60 cent gas tax hike then stood up a committee to study why gas prices are so high." 

PS:  The speed limit for all trucks and any vehicle towing a trailer now is 55 mph on I-10.  So we'll not arrive when planned, either.

Past the Salton Sea, approaching Palm Springs we find countless (John tried, but couldn't) wind turbines crowded together in the Coachella Valley. 

Just one cluster of dozens in this relatively small area!  Perhaps 400 or more across the valley.
{John's trying real hard not to say something acerbic about the terrible public cost:benefit ratio.}

Another day, we took a tram to the top of an 8,500-foot peak in the Palm Springs area.  Aside from the cold air and snow on the ground, John noticed people wearing foam pads --maybe 4 by 4 feet-- as if they were backpacks; some carried two or three.  Ken said that he'd learned they were cushions for folks who are bouldering, or what John had heard of as free climbing. Somewhat loudly scoffing, he told Ken that John's Mama didn't raise no fool and you can't convince him that a couple mattresses are going to save your life when falling from a cliff face.

OK, Ken, John hereby apologizes. These are what they are advertised to be, but it took a few YouTube vids to convince. Here's one: https://youtu.be/pKSQ5f3I7fo. Obviously, we're not talking cliff cliffs, but folks who are practicing do need to pad the inevitable fall.  John, eating crow, has relearned that one is never too old to learn:  a wasted day is a day without education. Add your favorite aphorism here: ____________.

There's more California ahead including the reason Debbie's bicycle has traveled across the country in our coach's 'basement'.

    ––  

**A federal prosecutor in Grand Rapids mentioned this to John more than a decade before President Trump attracted the Hateful Left's lightning for daring to Tweet the same thing. Let's trust the attorney on this one.