Mike Ball

This is what Mosaic Canyon in Death Valley reminded me of. It’s a sculpture garden in Escondido, about 35 miles north of San Diego. It was created by Niki de Saint Phalle, (or here) who has done several local sculptures in San Diego. It’s called Queen Califia’s Magic Garden. Queen Califia, for those of you not up on California black mythology, was a black amazon queen for whom the state of California was named. That’s a better story than it is a history, but what the heck!

She also has a large sculpture garden in Spain, which I’d like to see someday.

It’s really quite surprising to visit an ordinary-looking park, and suddenly come across a maze full of whimsey. I really love it when a civic group can stop being serious and do something totally off the wall like this. There’s another example in Coachman Park, in Clearwater, FL, a well-known venue for concerts and frisby-chasing. It has a little waterfall, and almost hidden in the foliage are two man-sized figures of what I can only call lizardmen. I wish I had pictures of them, but I don’t. It’s totally out of character for Clearwater, and I think it’s great.

You don’t get to see this very often, so I thought I’d share the current view from our deck. Those are the Cuyamaca and Laguna mountains with record snowfall. I’m sure glad that we got home in time to miss it.

If you want to read the whole story about our Death Valley Trip you should start at the beginning. We’ve posted a selection of pictures, which you can see as a group, or dispersed throughout the postings. I used an off-line blogger to make these posts throughout the vacation, then combined them with the photos and posted to the web when I got home.

Getting home wasn’t quite trivial, since we did it in the middle of a major storm. We didn’t even get out of the camper in the morning, because it was obviously very cold out. Touching a window told us that. We started to get a little nervous when we saw all of the snow as we approached Cajon Pass. Cajon Pass is the lowest one over the mountains, so if that was blocked we were stuck. Luckily, it was open and we made it through into rain and hail in the valley. We arrived home around 10:30, and I’m very glad that we did, because the radio reported that all passes were closed later in the day. Unloading took place in between hail and rain showers.

It was fun, but I don’t think I’d do it quite the same way again. I loved death valley, but the camper was too big for some of the places we wanted to go. I think next time we’ll stay at a hotel and use a smaller vehicle.

The cat seemed to adjust alright, but she’s obviously happier to be home, and recovered almost immediately after we got here. She was a lot of work, and I don’t think she was really any happier than she would have been left at home with a feeder.

A final word. If you expect the desert to be warm and dry, try summer.

Today is Friday, and we have to get home on Saturday, so we decided to leave Death Valley and go see the Owens Valley. Owens Valley has interested me since I moved to L.A., because it’s the first place that L.A. raided for water. You can read about it if you like, but the gist of it is that William Mulholand, by hook, crook, and politics, managed to get the city of Los Angeles to acquire most of the water rights in the Valley. He then had an aquaduct built to bring the water to L.A. Actually, he brought it mostly to the San Fernando Valley where he and his cronies owned land. Of course this left no water for the Owens Valley farmers, so the valley, which was once lush, is now becoming a desert.

We left Death Valley by the Western Route, across the Panamint mountains and valley. It was lovely, but the roads were narrow enough that Flo got a bit nervous. Actually, the camper did pretty well despite its size, but it did seem awfully big on some of those curves. We stopped at a place called Father Crowley Point which overlooked the valley. While we were there, a jet from one of the air bases came barreling down the canyon to the left into the larger valley at its end. He was actually below us as he went by. We tried to see where he had gone when he came back the same way. He was incredibly loud and so fast that by the time we heard him he was by. scary!

We entered the Owens valley by the lake, which has been dry for many years. Mulholand didn’t dry it out, nature did that long before he came. Thats the Sierra Nevada in the background. One of them is Mt. Whitney, which is about 14,000 feet high. The valley is about 4,000 feet up, so this is one of the biggest reliefs you’ll ever see. You can also see where the water comes from. What we mainly noticed is that it was cold! There was some company gathering chemicals from the lake bed, and they apparently have trouble with chemical dust pollution from the lake. I know we saw some dust-devils with chemical dust as we were leaving the area.

We went up the valley because I wanted to see where the Owens River got diverted to L.A. We couldn’t get there, because there’s a project to divert some water back to the River and there was big equipment running around. We did get to see the aquaduct, though it wasn’t easy. We talked with one of the workers who was going in to the construction site and she told us where we could cut across to see it.

The aquaduct looked pretty big, didn’t it? Well, the river looks like it once was about the same size. See those golden weeds in the middle of the picture? That’s whats left of the river. After we saw this, I decided that I’d seen what I came to see, and we left for home.

We had planned to stop at Inyokern, a small town at the mouth of the valley. We stopped to get gas, and it was so cold, with such a strong wind blowing, that we decided we didn’t want to stay there. We kept on South, and eventually spent the night on a vacant lot next to an Arco station. They let RV’s and trucks overnight there for free. It was close to a highway, and the railroad wasn’t that far away, but hey, it was there when we needed it. I came to appreciate the small bubble of warmth and light that the camper offered

To top it all off, the cat took this opportunity to get sick and start throwing up. Sometimes, things just seem to conspire to tell you that it’s time to go home.

We’re back in the campground where we spent the first night, and again we have wind shaking the camper and rattling the windows. They say a cold front is coming through and it will be at least 10° cooler tomorrow. If the weather is nasty, we might give up and start home a day early. I’d like to make a quick visit to Owens Valley just to see the place that Los Angeles steals its water. We’ll see tomorrow.

We started today by coming south and visiting Salt Creek, which is a spring-fed marsh and creek of heavily salinated water. There are some small fish called “desert pupfish” living in it. It’s a totally isolated ecosystem. The water comes from springs at the base of an alluvial fan, runs along the surface for a while, then runs out into the desert where it quickly sinks into another alluvial deposit. It turns out that there are a number of disconnected ecosystems where pupfish live. All are slightly different varieties that separated from each other when the lake that had covered death valley dried up. One can trace the drying process by noting when the fish differentiated from one another.

After that, we visited the Borax Museum at Furnace Creek. It was a small mineral museum that at least showed samples of the different kinds of borax-containing minerals, and explained just what borax is. It was worth the 10 minutes or so that it took to see it. I had to get out though, because it was hard to keep my mouth shut as the proprietor was giving a lecture about fiber optics to a visitor. He had a couple of small facts right, and an enormous amount of bull tacked on to make some point that I never quite understood. I did notice that the visitor wasn’t really paying much attention, and that’s just as well.

We also visited Badwater, the lowest car-accessable point in the US. There’s a spring there, and the water is drinkable but very heavily mineralized. It’s right next to the huge salt pan the makes up the lower half of death valley. Moisture comes to the surface and evaporates, leaving thick deposits of salt mixed with gravel. In some places it’s a thousand feet thick. They say you can hear it talking when temperatures change. I found it quite impressive.

The spring is home to some slugs, or so they say. Those white patches you see are salt deposits forming in the middle of the water. Like most springs here, the aquifer is at the bottom of an alluvial fan. Apparently the rivers here all run at the bottom of large collections of rocks. When it rains, the rocks get washed out into fans like the ones you see in the background here.

As sunset approached, we went to Zabriski Point, which looks onto a series of heavily folded badlands formation. Light and dark rock interleave in vertical stripe to make wonderful shapes. Since the rock is laid down in layers, think of how much it must have deformed to make the layers verticle as they are here.

On the other side we can see somewhat different badlands. In the back you can see the dark volcanic capstone that holds some of in place.

Zabriski Point was one of the few formations I knew of in Death Valley before we went, though I’d heard all of the legendary names. There was a movie called Zabriski Point that I remember seeing in the early 70’s. It wasn’t very good, sort of a hippy road movie that made it’s points with a sledgehammer, but I remembered the name and the photography of the area..

Now, it’s back to the parking lot for another night.

Last night was indeed much nicer than Monday night; very quiet and calm air after the storm blew through. We slept well. Even the cat was much more relaxed. The mountains were covered with a light snow dusting all around, and the day was bright and clear. Beautiful.

This morning we walked around the campground, Mesquite Springs, locating the spring and looking for petroglyphs. Apparently The best way to locate springs in the desert is to look for salt deposits on the surface. We found lots of salt. We had several references to the petroglyphs, but nothing that told us how to find them, and all of the rangers professed ignorance. We talked to the campground host when he came around, and he said that there had been so much damage to the petroglyphs by vandals that the park service decided that they would no longer tell the public where to find them. We never did find them, though we saw a rabbit and what was probably a roadrunner.

We drove south, finding a few places on the road where last night’s rain had washed mud and rocks across the road. we took an unmarked road off to the side and visited the original stovepipe well. It was named because they stuck an old stovepipe in it to mark its location. It’s right next to a range of sand dunes. As we drove up we saw big towers of dust over the dunes. It was probably dust devils, but they were too far away to tell for sure. We did see some smaller ones closer in. The actual town of Stovepipe Wells was an unimpressive tourist trap.

Mosaic canyon was at the end of a long washboard road that went straight up an alluvial fan. The top of the road gave a lovely view of the middle portion of the valley, and the canyon was an interesting combination of water-sculpted marble and conglomerate, hence, “mosaic”. I hope you can get an impression from these pictures. The conglomerate really does look like some mosaics I’ve seen.

We went back up to Mesquite Springs for another night. I really like the north part of the valley, and the campground is the nicest we’ve found. The scenery is in some ways more subtle than that further south, but it’s satisfying to me. I could happily live here if it had an internet connection

The cat came out of her funk shortly after my last post and decided that eating, drinking, and, well, disposing, were good things to do. She liked it much better when we weren’t moving. She decided that she wanted to join us in bed, and nothing would dissuade her. She’d end up on the floor, then the next thing we’d know, there she was again. I finally decided to let her curl up between me and the wall, and we spent the rest of the night that way

The night wasn’t the most restful anyway, since we had a gusty wind shaking and rattling the camper. It finally died out toward morning. Tonight we are at a different and rather isolated campground, and there’s no wind. I don’t expect any sleep problems tonight. The campground is much nicer, too, with widely spread campsites in a pleasant location near a dry wash. The last one was basically a big parking lot.
We saw two coyotes wandering around in the early evening. There wasn’t much light, which explains the quality of the picture. The ranger said that there was a pack of 6 or 7 that lived in the gulleys next to the camp, and they would sweep the camp for whatever was left loose. He told tales of finding pots, cloths, and even a wok in their dens. Apparently they are especially fond of old sneakers, for the rich odors, no doubt, and if campers leave their shoes outside of the tent they often wake to find them missing.

Today we slowly drove north from Furnace Creek stopping at an old borax mine along the way. I realized that I don’t even know what borax is, other than that it’s a Boron compound. I looked it up on the internet when I got home. I was wrong. borax is actually any of a number of boron compounds, possibly all mixed up. The picture shows a couple of cars from a typical 20-mule team. The tank car carries water for the mules!

It’s interesting that the driest place in the US is largely shaped by water You can see huge alluvial fans coming down from the mountains on either side of the valley. The floor of the valley is covered with rocks, and looks just like a stream.

We went to Scotty’s Castle at the very north end of the valley and took the tour through the house. Scotty wasn’t the owner or builder, by the way. He was a conman who persuaded East coast businessmen to send him money to exploit fake gold mines. The fellow who built the house wasn’t fooled in the least, but he had more money than he knew what to do with, and he found Scotty enormously amusing. It’s a good story
There was an interesting and very large theatre organ which they wouldn’t let us see. About all that was visible was the movement of the swell shutters. I asked if there was some way to see the interior of the organ, but was told that it was just too delicate to allow visitors. I can’t really blame them. I got a picture of the console, which gives some idea of its complexity.

It had a self-player attachment, like a player piano. You just stick in the Rolls and it will play itself I thought it was the most interesting piece of furniture there.
We bought a CD of the organ playing, and you can hear a sample. I never knew that they made them work like a player piano.

They also had a grand piano with a player attachment built in, and a small carillon in a bell tower (without the player attachment). It seems they liked music, but nobody in the family played.

It started to rain while we were on the tour, and the rest of the afternoon was dark and occasionally stormy. We drove over to Ubehebe crater, formed by a steam explosion when magma met groundwater. It’s not at all like the volcanic crater we’ve seen elsewhere, since the sides are all sedimentary rocks

We got settled in the campsite just before a storm came through. It was quite impressive, with gusty winds, lightning and heavy rain. We called the weather service to check, and they assured us that we were safe from flash floods where we were, so we stayed here and now the weather has moved on.

The camper is truly convenient in bad weather, as I was remarking to Flo, warm and dry go a long way toward a good camping experience. Being able to cook meals with a microwave doesn’t hurt either.

Of course you expect cold, rainy weather when you go to Death Valley, don’t you? That’s what we have, apparently for the entire week. At least we won’t be too hot. It is pretty windy, rattling the camper and making it sway from time to time. Then we went to the ranger presentation and it was all about the big storms of 2004 and 2005 that washed out roads, washed cars down canyons, and generally isolated the area for a week. Apparently, they just reopened some of the roads in January. It gives us that nice, secure, feeling as we contemplate a rainy week.

The scenery is lovely, though. It’s spectacular and weird. We came down through a canyon in what I think was dolomite. It was candy yellow rock eroded into badlands formations. We passed by Twenty-Mule Team Canyon, so I’m guessing that there were borax mines there once. We’ll find our more when we get to explore tomorrow. We really got in too close to dark to do much exploring today.

The camper has a lot of room inside, though we haven’t got things all that well organized yet, so there’s a bit of chaos figuring out how to get to everything. I think we could actually use less interior space without feeling too cramped, as long as we had it well-organized. I didn’t find it all that difficult to drive, but it does sway on turns and bumps. Flo thinks it’s huge (which it is). It was a pretty easy trip.

The cat generally disapproved. She spent most of the trip in Flo’s lap, but she refused to purr. Tonight, as things have settled down a bit, she is purring and eating, so I guess she isn’t that unhappy. It will be interesting to see how she adapts.

More tomorrow when we get to look over the neighborhood.

We’re about to take off for Death Valley, which should be interesting. We’re renting an RV, which we pick up today, then heading out tomorrow morning. I’m going to be interested in how well I tolerate such a large vehicle. I’m also wondering about how the cat is going to take it, since we are planning to take her along with us. Flo’s sister takes their cat along in their RV all the time. I’m not so sure about ours, who’s getting a bit old and set in her ways. I’m looking forward to the getaway. I’ll be completely cut off from all communications, or at least that’s what I intend to claim.

A bit earlier this week, we went to a concert by the UCI wind ensemble. It was pretty good, but seemed a bit short. That’s not really a problem, but it was close to three hours there and back for a concert that was a little over an hour. Still, it was nice to get out and do something different for change.

Kevin and Tali came down Friday night, and spent yesterday at a dance competition at UCSD. We watched it in the afternoon, but didn’t stay for the evening events. The seating was all bleachers, and our bottoms just aren’t up to sitting on bleachers for hours at a time. It was fun to watch, but for me it starts looking pretty repetitious after a while. I like watching Kevin and Tali dance, but I lose interest in watching all of the others.