January 9, 2002
As I write this, we're boondocking (living without hookups of any kind) in the BLM (U.S. Bureau of Land Management) Long Term Visitor Area (LTVA) in Quartzsite, AZ. And we'll post pictures of it on a later post.
We'd taken Moby Dick and driven the 45 miles or so to Joshua Tree National Park and spent the day touring. And left the camera in the Road Abode (insert big groan here). So, the next day after telling friends Frank and Susie about the fun we'd had in spite of being cameraless, they offered to drive as they wanted to see the park as well. We accepted their invitation willingly for several reasons. Number one, they have a Jeep Cherokee, and in Barb's opinion almost anything is better to go poking around in than Moby Dick because he rides like a truck and is pretty big for little dirt roads. And, since we normally take longer to "see" things than most people and prefer to go sightseeing unaccompanied, we'd already seen this place (to whatever degree one can see it in only one day) and were willing to go at whatever pace our friends wanted to go. As it turned out, all four of us enjoyed just poking along, looking at all kinds of things at a leisurely pace. On the right is Barb demonstrating her love of Joshua trees. Carefully! They have nice spines at the ends of their leaves.
Now, while I couldn't take too many pictures of rocks, some were more outstanding than others, and the questions evoked by what we were seeing were endless. Like why (on the left) do the rocks seem to have been laid down in a sedimentary fashion, with the strata lines running horizontally, and then there's this vertical band of quartz now and again? On the right is what we found on the "Barker Dam". Should it have maybe been called the "Keys Dam"?
It was interesting to see the water marks on the rocks and dam, showing that at one time this whole desert area had a lot more moisture than it does now. The dam was built by cattlemen to provide water for both the cows and some irrigation of the grasses they'd imported. This dam was about 1/2 mile from the road, and I couldn't imagine hauling all the sacks of cement required to build this little structure.
On the left is one of the water troughs that had water piped from the dam, and on the right is another smaller dam downstream from the larger dam. Lots of work involved in all this.
Susie made some crack about her stature, and there Frank (who is several inches taller than me) and I are making her feel better by having pictorial proof that she's as tall as any of us. And the squirrel on the right kept a pretty close eye on us while making itself vulnerable to some eagle or other raptor to capture an early lunch.
After walking down the hill, we got better pictures of the lower part of the dams as well as a more modern wooden watering trough.
There's Barb "ringing the bells" on the left. She thought the Joshua tree looked like a pair of bells, so I told her to go ring them! And on the right, a shot of the landscape with some tourists blocking a little of the view. Interesting desert.
These two shots give some idea of the many shapes these wonderful trees take. On the left a young one, probably about 25 years old, and on the right an older one. They grow about an inch a year and die around 75 years old.
On the left are some petroglyphs and some garbage scribbled by idiots, and on the right a view toward the Salton Sea. The day before--when the camera was resting at home--the view of course was much clearer, and we could really see the sea a lot better.
The view toward L.A. through the San Gorgonian pass with all the windmills making electricy. And then a not-so-wild coyote, carefully begging scraps from tourists. This particular batch of tourists love wildlife, and would never ever feed them anything, so she went hungry as far as we were concerned. Plenty of "real" coyote food in this desert.
After watching the coyote watch us in hopes of a handout, we decided it was lunchtime. Susie put on quite a show for us with the mustard. We'd gained about 2500 feet in altitude, and it didn't dawn on her that the difference in air pressure would propel mustard all over the place when she opened it, and despite its best efforts to get on all of us, she managed to just squirt several big gobs of it on their bread. And napkins. And table. And we laughed "with" her or course.
You can see that Frank was smart enough to keep his hands where they belonged, and I was just munching my sandwich and staying back. You might also note that here we are in the desert way south in California and I'm wearing a T-shirt, flannel shirt, and my quilted overshirt. No sandals, tank top, and shorts yet. Harumpfh!!