Chapter 68 San Diego (again) and the California Desert
May 7, 2001
April 13, 2001 We arrived at Campland on the Bay in San Diego on Friday the 13th. This is Easter weekend, and also Spring Break for some local schools, so when we made reservations last Tuesday we had little choice of sites and felt lucky to get in at all. We're tucked back in the ghetto of long-term residents. It's crowded and noisy. Every site seems to have at least two cars, and we had to request that two vehicles be moved before we could get into our site. Our neighbor has been here a year and has a huge boat, a jeep, and a big old Lincoln sedan spilling out of his site, in addition to a very large motorhome. He's a middle-aged black man -- a rarity in the RV community. Many of the residents are young and have small children. The place feels and sounds more like an inner-city tenement neighborhood than like a campground.
But we can walk 100 yards to the beach (on Mission Bay), and then the place again feels like a resort. And it's still the most convenient location for our needs -- just a few miles from the places we'll visit -- shopping, the medical facility, our son's apartment, the good restaurants of La Jolla and Pacific Beach, central San Diego.
Searching the Internet for "San Diego Restaurants" brings up an almost overwhelming amount of information. Perhaps the best of the sites is the Union-Tribune's web site, which has an extensive collection of their restaurant reviews published during the past couple of years. The site is well-organized and convenient to use -- with a good search facility, links to a location map for each restaurant, links to each restaurant's own home page, if it exists, and with on-line menus for most of the restaurants I checked. It (along with other interesting stuff) can be found at http://sandiego.citysearch.com/section/restaurants
Over the next week, we tried three restaurants from among those that were reasonably close and whose reviews made them sound appealing to our particular preferences. There are many more which we'd like to try. This is yet another reason why San Diego is on our short list of possible places to settle down permanently when we stop traveling.
4/14 After a day of catching up on almost a month's accumulated snail mail and a few days of Email, we picked up our son, Dan, and went to The Russia House for a delicious and interesting dinner. It's apparently operated by a Russian émigré family, and is a small, pleasantly decorated, storefront cafe in Normal Heights -- a quiet neighborhood north of Balboa Park and South of Interstate 8. The menu offers ethnic specialties from several regions of Russia and surrounding countries. We found the food interesting, very well prepared, delicious, with somewhat understated spices (except for Helen's marinated lamb, which was quite spicy). It's worth another visit, to try some additional items.
4/18 The Fishery, in central Pacific Beach, is actually a large retail and wholesale fish market which contains a small restaurant. Although the building is modern and spacious, there is no attempt to shield the restaurant portion from the "market" atmosphere -- with the retail sales counters and the kitchen in full view of the restaurant tables. The seafood menu is extensive, with many "market specials" featuring whatever happened to be caught recently, sometimes very unusual things. The preparation tends toward careful and tasteful simplicity -- a slab of seafood, perhaps lightly marinated or blackened or otherwise seasoned, grilled and served with a side of lightly steamed market vegetables. Their clam chowder was excellent.
4/20 Fleming's Steakhouse, in La Jolla, was almost pure steakhouse, except for the obligatory few seafood items. Everything is a la carte. Salads, potatoes, vegetables, or other side dishes are ordered separately, and are fairly large portions intended to be shared family style. Their delicious onion rings are huge -- more properly called onion hemispheres. A large sweet onion is cut in half and then disassembled into the individual dome-shaped sections, which are dipped in a highly seasoned breading mixture and fried, and then served neatly stacked in nested fashion in an impressively high pile. The beef is all prime. The wine list is long, and over 100 wines are available by the glass as well as by the bottle. It's all overpriced, of course. Unfortunately, it's no longer possible to assume that high prices should assure good service. Competent professional waiters seem to be a dying breed, and the overall experience was marred by clueless staff who thought nothing of interrupting me in the middle of a sentence to ask "if everything is OK".
Medical visits are over -- nothing scheduled for a year, other than a lab test in a month, which we can get done almost anywhere.
4/21 We'd planned to leave this morning, but a North Pacific Storm has blown in, with a heavy overcast and occasionally heavy rain. Not fun to hitch up in the rain, and not a nice day to be driving anyway, so we'll just hang out here for another day. Fortunately, the campground isn't crowded now that school breaks have ended, and we have no problem extending our stay.
The storm ended by noon and the skies were clearing, so we decided to take a local sightseeing drive which we've intended to do and never got around to. We drove south and east on small roads to the National Olympic Training Center, on Otay Lake -- 28 miles from our campsite. We walked through the Visitor's Center and watched a brief movie about the Sydney Olympics, but skipped the long tour of the entire facility. The plans for the facility are grandiose, but only a portion has been implemented. There is housing for a substantial number of athletes, and lots of facilities for outdoor team and individual sports. As yet there is no gymnasium and no watersport facilities.
We continued on south and east through low mountain ranges to the Mexican border at Tecate (a typically scruffy border town), then backtracked and headed north to Jamul before turning west, coming back through Spring Valley. These areas have some promising places for us to search for housing -- many are high on hillsides, with impressive views and prices much lower than comparable homes closer to the city. Rancho Jamul is a private gated community with spectacular views and several-acre lots. Probably spectacular prices too -- we haven't asked.
4/22 Hitched up and left, under skies washed clean and left brilliantly blue by yesterday's storm. The drive along Interstate 8 was familiar but still pleasant. The fire scars from the Alpine forest fire, back around Christmas time, are still visible but fading as new growth appears on the hillsides, helped along by heavier-that-normal winter rains. At the higher elevations, ceanothus is blooming profusely, looking surprisingly like eastern lilacs.
We left I-8 on SR S-2, which meanders north through the southern portions of Anza Borrego State Park. It's new country to us, although the desert is quite similar to the portions of the park further north, in which we've spent lots of time. We found a pleasant boondocking spot at (N32° 56.572', W116 .16.581'), 1.6 mile south of the primitive landing strip at Agua Caliente Springs. We're only about 150 yards west of the road -- but it's a lightly traveled road so traffic doesn't intrude. A good jeep trail leads up an alluvial fan, and dead-ends at the foot of fairly steep cliffs. We found a wide level spot against the hillside, where we have a panoramic view out over the desert to the hills beyond. It's a spacious campsite, but not quite spacious enough to allow turning our 55' long rig around, so we backed all the way in from the road. A 40' motorhome could probably turn around without problem. The soil is coarse decomposed granite -- a firm surface on which to drive.
Small canyons lead back further into the hills from near our campsite, making pleasant although short hikes. Carefully hidden on the hillside above us (but visible when I climbed higher up on the mountain), is a rugged fiberglass enclosure labeled as housing scientific instruments belonging to the University of California, with solar panels on top. We're curious what they are measuring. Seismic activity?
Many flowers surround us. A grey bush (Indigo Bush?) is covered with tiny deep purple flowers. The creosote bushes are covered with yellow. Cholla, hedgehog, beavertail, and barrel cactus are all in bloom -- purple, orange, chartreuse, and yellow. Ocotillo branches are tipped with flame orange. Small annual flowers are also quite common -- lupines, poppies, and other species we couldn't identify
4/24 The desert is more alive than we've ever seen it -- but it's entirely small things. There are thousands of orange butterflies fluttering through the blooming shrubs around us. Although it's not immediately obvious from the seemingly random fluttering around the bushes, the entire butterfly population is migrating northwest. More thousands of huge (up to 4" long) yellow-striped caterpillars are swarming over the foliage and along the ground. Many different kinds of flies are buzzing around us as we hike (fortunately, none of them are biting). At night, with lights on in the trailer, the screens are covered with moths.
We've seen or heard a raven and a couple of small birds (the latter shy and hidden in the shrubs -- I couldn't identify them), but otherwise haven't been aware of any animals. At night, the wind dies and the desert is completely quiet -- the coyotes have gone elsewhere and there are no noises other than a faint whisper from one or two high-flying jets.
Daytime temperatures are gradually increasing -- low 80's the day we arrived, and probably will be mid-90's today. A gentle breeze and a couple of low-power fans are keeping the trailer bearable.
A minor meteor shower has been underway the last several nights. Helen stayed outside, watching the night sky for hours, and was rewarded by a few bright meteors.
I was wrong about "not biting". During the evening, I became aware of several large swollen, itchy, bites, but have no idea which of the many types of fly to blame.
4/26 We left fairly late this morning (noon). We haven't figured out how to travel with a partially-fitted jigsaw puzzle spread out on the dinette table, so we didn't leave until Helen finished it. The drive to Palm Springs, California, was mostly along familiar roads, the early part through Anza Borrego State Park, then north along the Salton Sea to Indio, then briefly along Interstate 10. We chose Emerald Desert RV Park, in Palm Desert, because they advertised instant phone hookups at the RV sites. It turns out that there is a $20 hookup charge, which hardly seemed worth it for two days. It's otherwise a very attractive park, with fairly large sites, neat concrete pads, many trees, and lots of lush grass. Four modem hookup stations are available in the clubhouse, each at a separate desk. Appropriately enough, our site is near the corner of Gobi and Kalahari streets.
The RV sites are surrounded by a golf course. We aren't golfers, but the wide expanses of green grass between us and the city streets (and the expressway) are a nice buffer. I had to sign a form releasing the RV Park from any liability for damage caused by errant golf balls (state law makes the individual golfer responsible for damages caused by his balls).
The Radio/CD player display died, apparently when a screw pulled out and one side of the radio fell an inch onto the shelf below it. Everything except the display works fine, but it's very hard to use without the display. I guess it's time to do some shopping.
4/27 Did some shopping. Bought a new radio/CD Player plus odds & ends. Spent part of the afternoon installing the new radio while Helen went out. The jacaranda trees have huge blue tresses. One road is bordered by a one mile hedge of white blooming oleander. Ramon Road has a long bridge over a wide desert wash containing a golf course, with the greens and fairways being narrow strips of grass surrounded by "sand traps" of unirrigated desert.
4/28 The Palm Springs Art museum was a pleasant surprise. It's a fairly large pleasingly designed modern building, with a lot of nice stuff on exhibit. Two special exhibits were in progress: Photographer Stephen Willard lived in Palm Springs and began photographing the deserts and mountains of the region about 1922, well before the crowds arrived, continuing for 50 years. His estate donated his entire file of negatives to the museum. A large collection of new photos printed from these negatives was on display. Perhaps some day the museum will begin selling prints from these negatives -- there are some I'd like to own.
George Montgomery became, in his later years, a world traveler and art collector, as well as a competent artist himself. He had a large house in Palm Springs, and furnished it with treasures from all over the world, many of which are currently on display in the museum. He also was a sculptor and furniture builder, and quite a few of his own works were on display. Helen was especially attracted to a 7-foot-long Queen Anne double desk. Dave liked a 10-foot-diameter round dining table, with a five-foot lazy susan built into the middle, the whole thing suspended from the ceiling on four steel rods which also formed four huge wrought-iron candelabras. As a long-legged person, I would find it wonderful not to have to contend with table legs -- there were none.
But the William Holden collection was the best in the museum. Large photographs of his living room and bedroom showed how treasures collected from his business interests and travels were used as decorative items in his very personal space. Many of these same objects are now displayed in the museum, near the photos. Death of the Buddha, a 5' long gilded bronze reclining on a gorgeous Chinese lacquer bench (originally in front of Holden's bedroom fireplace); a 12' high door for a thatched hut in the New Guinea Highlands (beside the living room fireplace); a 19th C. wall hanging from Rajasthan (over that same fireplace); an exceedingly rare 17th C. Coptic Bible and cross from Ethiopia; an Egyptian tablet fragment from 250 BC; a pair of inscribed bronze drums from Laos, and many more.
Fernand Lungren was another prolific artist and illustrator, represented by a large special exhibit. We enjoyed many of his paintings -- ranging from sweeping Grand Canyon landscapes to somber scenes of rain- and fog-dimmed streets in Europe.
The museum has a small but nice collection of nineteenth-century landscape art. Attractive outdoor sculpture gardens contained mostly contemporary works, and we found a few things that we really liked. The seismograph in the hall showed there had been a tiny tremor nearby early yesterday morning which we slept through. The display of photos of damage from previous quakes was interesting.
4/28 The Coachella Valley Museum and Cultural Center in Indio advertised a display on date culture, so Helen set off to see what she could learn. She joined a small tour group led by a very knowledgeable docent, and was soon stuffed with interesting details.
Date Palms, the source of the dates, are in the grass family. They grow more than 50' high, and have sturdy 6" thorns on the sides of the stems of their lofty branches. Although a date seed will sprout, the variety will not come true to form, so dates are propagated from offshoots that grow at the base of mature trees. It takes 5 years for the offshoot to be big enough to transplant and another eight to bloom and set fruit. The fruit is hand pollinated, with one male tree to 40 female trees. Then each fruit cluster is protected from rain by a waxed paper cone. (This is a desert, so less than 10" of rain falls in a year, but a small amount of rain at the wrong time would keep the fruit from drying properly.) Each fruit cluster is tied to a strong leaf/branch for support. The fruit clusters are sprayed with pesticides, and about 250 lbs. per tree eventually harvested by hand. This labor-intensive work is all done in the tree tops, from high ladders affixed to each tree.
The date groves need irrigation every 10 days and it takes two weeks for a drop of water to get here from the Colorado River. But a grower can order and get water in 3 to 4 hours. The source of water for the American and Coachilla Canals is Parker Dam, 100's of miles east where the water is at 45' elevation. Six pump stations raise it to 1807' to tunnel thru the nearby San Jacinto Mountains, whence it drops again to sea level in Los Angeles.
Dates are man's oldest cultivated fruit. Egyptian drawings 55 centuries old show priests irrigating date palms. Sumerian scribes of 3,000 BC, in the oldest writing known to mankind, recorded hand pollination of dates on clay tablets. Date seeds were found in excavations of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham in 2,000 BC. King Solomon's temple was decorated with a date palm motif. Dates were brought to the USA from Africa in 1906. Because of problems in Africa, their trees died out and we now supply Africa with new offshoots.
Helen also drove to the Shields Date Farm, where a 20-minute video titled Romance and Sex Life of the Date was fun. And the date ice cream cone (date pulp in vanilla-like chocolate ripple ice cream) was delicious. So were the grapefruit available in their farm store, which they grow in the shade of the date palms.
4/29 The temperature in Palm Desert has been in the mid-90's, with one day over 100. It feels like time to go find someplace cooler, so we headed for Joshua Tree National Park -- only about 40 miles away, but several thousand feet higher.
At the turnoff from I-10 to the Joshua Tree south entrance, instead of turning north into the park, we dropped the trailer at a turnout on the side road and headed south with just the truck. Someone on RV-Talk had said that Box Canyon Road was an interesting drive, and indeed it was. As canyons go, this one isn't particularly deep, but the rock walls are eroded into interesting formations. Near the southern end of the canyon, we began to see the Salton Sea, to the south. A side road leads west and then north, up Painted Canyon, smaller, steeper walled, more intimate. The road dead-ends a few miles up the canyon, but foot trails continue. The bottoms of these canyons are cris-crossed with jeep trails, many of them leading to pleasant campsites. It's BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land, and camping is free and unrestricted. Except for these narrow corridors along the roads, the surrounding land is a designated Wilderness, closed to motor vehicles but penetrated by many foot and horse trails. It would be a nice place to explore, in cooler weather.
We retraced our path, picked up the trailer, and continued north into the National Park. The small Visitor's Center at the entrance provided lots of information, and helpful rangers answered our many questions. There are three campgrounds in the park which can accommodate our long trailer. Cottonwood, half a mile from this south entrance station, has quite a few large sites and a trail to a palm oasis, but otherwise has little of interest and is a long way from the most interesting portions of the park. Black Rock, 75 miles away at the extreme Northwest corner of the park, has lots of big-rig sites, and is one of only two campgrounds in the park which take reservations (the other is Indian Cove. These two campgrounds, plus Cottonwood, charge a $10 camping fee.) Jumbo Rocks campground has a few big-rig sites, and is in the middle of the park. There are several other campgrounds which cannot be negotiated with a big rig. These, like Jumbo Rocks, are free, with a 14-day camping limit. This is one of the larger National Parks, containing 794,000 acres, mostly designated wilderness, large portions of it accessible only by foot, horseback, or 4-wheel drive vehicle.
We were told that every campground was full Friday and Saturday nights, but all were clearing out today (Sunday), and that Cottonwood had plenty of space, Black Rock certainly had space, and Jumbo Rock (our preference) might have a few open big-rig sites. We decided to head for Jumbo Rocks, planning to go on to Black Rock if Jumbo was full. Another possibility would be to go to the commercial RV Parks in 29 Palms, just outside the park at the north entrance.
It took a long time to get to Jumbo Rocks. It's a slow twisty road, but we also kept stopping in the many pullouts to read interpretive signs or look at the multitude of interesting flowers and plants along the way. We bought a guide to the local flowers, and had identified a dozen or more along the roadside during our first few stops.
The Southeast portion of the park, where we entered, is fairly low -- part of the Colorado Desert (which is a subdivision of the Sonoran Desert). The most prominent plant here is the Mohave Yucca -- a stout tree-like plant with a trunk up to a foot through at the base, standing up to 10 feet tall and rarely branching. Many were in bloom -- 15" clusters of white flowers standing on spikes above the top of the plant. The silver cholla is another interesting plant we haven't noticed elsewhere. It's shaped somewhat like the teddybear cholla (a dense cluster of branches on top of a single stem, typically 3 feet tall), and is indeed an unusual silver color.
As we climbed North and West, we moved into the Mohave Desert and began to see occasional Joshua Trees, initially small, but larger as we gained altitude. These are in the yucca family and are really trees, in size and shape -- sometimes over 20' high and almost that wide, branching freely, with leaves only at the outer ends of the woody branches. The leaves are much shorter than other yuccas. The Joshua tree grows only in the Mojave Desert. It's adapted to cold weather, and apparently requires occasional well-below-freezing temperatures in order to propagate. The scientific speculation is that the growth tips are damaged by freezing, and only then will it branch and bloom.
We were fortunate to find several big sites available at Jumbo Rocks Campground, and picked a nice one, with a great view of the rocks. This campground has 125 sites, widely scattered among the rock, but only a few sites are suitable for large RV's. There is no water or electricity in the park. Chemical vault toilets are available. Camping is free with park admission. (Admission is $10 for a seven-day pass, but even this is free with our Golden Age card).
The "Jumbo" rocks are huge monzogranite formations. These sometimes are piles of rounded house-sized boulders, and sometimes freestanding pillars or monolithic cliffs sculptured into fantastic shapes. Among the rocks are enough little caves and hidden passages to keep the curious exploring for hours. And indeed, I've spent hours hiking through these rocks. No two places are the same, and every corner seems to lead to an intriguing new passage.
The temperature when we arrived at 4 PM was 77 degrees -- very pleasant and at least 15 degrees cooler than Palm Springs.
The Chia plant, salvia columbariae, is in bloom here. It is a mint with low small fragrant crinkly leaves, a square stem and 1" balls of blue flowers on 8 to 10: stalks. The paper bag shrub, salazaria mexicana, is covered with 1/2" pink paper bags inflated and crimped together at the ends. The impressive Prince's Plume and Blazing Star and the perfumed hallucinogenic Sacred Datura are also here and in bloom within a few feet of the road, mixed in with the yuccas, the cacti, and assorted bushes (indigo, ocotillo, bladderpod, creosote, desert senna, desert willow, palo verde and a dozen others), all in bloom.
The occasional presence of the piñon pine, single-leaf juniper, and turbinella oak provide further indication that we're now in the Mohave Desert.
One afternoon, we took a long loop drive through the northwest portion of the park. We drove north to the park Visitor's Center in 29 Palms, where we enjoyed the interpretive material and then walked the short trail to 29 Palms Oasis. This oasis is a long narrow area formed by an upwelling of ground water where a geologic fault in the underlying rock strata interrupts the flow down from the mountains to the south. At one time, there was open water year-round. Since 1947, the water table has fallen and the water no longer reaches the surface. There is still sufficient sub-surface water to supply the needs of a lush growth of palms and other plants. The park provides enough supplemental water to maintain one small pond in the center of the oasis.
We drove west along SR-62, outside the park, to the Black Rock Campground, inside the National Park but accessible only from a dead-end road leading South from SR-62. Several communities along this highway are developing rapidly, with modern shopping centers and hundreds of expensive homes visible on the slopes south of the highway.
Black Rock is one of three campgrounds in the park which can accommodate large RV's. It's an attractive spot, on a gentle slope which provides views of the valley to the north from nearly every campsite. Most of the campsites are large enough to accommodate the largest RV's. It was nearly empty when we were there, on a weekday, but we're told that every campsite in the entire park was filled last Friday and Saturday.
From Black Rock, we retraced our path a few miles and then headed back into the park from SR-62 at the Western Entrance Station. Park Boulevard led us on a meandering route down canyons and across open desert back to our campground at Jumbo Rocks. A few miles before we got back, we were startled to see a coyote lying in the shade of a bush, just at the edge of the shoulder of the road. And then a fairly small black bird with white wing patches and a prominent crest flew across the road in front of us -- unlike anything we've ever seen. Back at the trailer, we dug out the guidebook and found it was a male phainopepla.
5/3 After dark, Dave went for a little walk in the light of the nearly full moon, and ended up walking the entire 3-mile loop of the Skull Rock Trail through the desert -- along sandy washes, over monzogranite ridges, along the base of sculptured cliffs. The dark sky and intense moonlight gives a whole different view of the desert, with the fantastic shapes of the rocks and the contorted Joshua Trees forming weird silhouettes against the sky. The pale sand trail was easily visible, often bordered with white rocks, so I never needed my flashlight except to read the interpretive signs along the way.
5/4 We drove up to Keys View, at 5100 feet on the escarpment which drops abruptly into the Coachella Valley on the South rim of the park. Even with a strong, cool, north wind, the view was mediocre, with distant mountains dimmed by Los Angeles smog. We could see the Salton Sea, faintly, and could barely make out Signal Mountain, 95 miles away in Mexico. Closer in, the several communities from Indio to Palm Springs, strung out along Interstate 10 in the Coachella Valley, could be studied in detail through binoculars. The huge aqueduct, the San Andreas Fault, and the railroad tracks were prominent linear features. To the west, where the valley rises to San Gorgonio Pass, there are hundreds of windmills generating power from the strong prevailing winds funneling through the pass.
On the way beck from Keys View, we stopped to investigate a wide valley floor densely covered with flowers -- yellow desert dandelion, white and pink birdcage evening primrose, pink sand verbena, and blue phacelia. Charred remains of Joshua trees made us realize that a fire had burned the area, clearing the brush, enriching the soil with ash, and along with unusually abundant spring rains, creating ideal conditions for the emergence of this profusion of knee-high annuals.
The Geology View Road is an 18-mile self-guided interpretive 4-wheel drive trip extending from the main park road south to the edge of the mountains. We did the first half, enjoying the desert scenery and the explanations of the interesting rock formations. But at the point where the road becomes a one-way loop, the sand road surface was becoming a bit too deep and loose for our non-four-wheel-drive truck, so we gave up and headed back.
Dave climbed Mt. Ryan in the afternoon. The trail is generally smooth and well maintained, and is a 3-mile round trip, with about 700 feet of elevation gain. When I hiked this trail 3 years ago, dense clouds obscured the top half of the mountain, so the view was non-existent. This time, the air was cool and brilliantly clear and I had an excellent 360-degree view of the several connected valleys of the central part of the Park.
Hiking in the desert makes us thirsty, and on several occasions we spent the evening absorbing large quantities of liquid around a campfire, watching the sun set and the stars pop out. Helen also got up in the wee hours to enjoy the dark hour between moonset and sunrise, using binoculars to examine galaxies in Scorpio and Sagittarius, constellations lost in the haze of the southern horizon when viewed from the northern U.S, and hence less familiar to us.
5/6/01 We've been at Joshua Tree exactly a week. We've enjoyed the ambience of this spot, and could happily stay another week. But we're running out of water (none available in this campground), and are getting low on some food items, so it's probably time to leave. We'll head over to Lake Havasu and try to find out why that area is such a popular RV destination.