Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona
Luck was not really with me this afternoon. First I tried to use the onboard restroom before I left the train. Unfortunately a young Asian man just barely beat me to it and proceeded to occupy the place until we got to the Fontana station. I detrained and set off in my car, stopping briefly to buy some $1.69 gas. Unfortunately I first pulled up to the wrong side of the pump (it was an unfamiliar car, after all) and then I couldn't figure out how to get the credit card machine at the station to work (they had one central machine for all the pumps). They wouldn't let you use a credit card inside, and I had almost no cash left, so I just gave up and set out down Sierra Avenue one last time. The construction was back at the Sierra interchange, so I turned east on Valley and went over to Cedar Avenue in Rialto. There was a nightmarish tangle of traffic trying to enter the freeway there, and what I did to enter myself was probably not strictly legal. I got on, though, and neither I nor the car is any the worse for wear. Traffic was flowing well on I-10, so I decided to try the cruise control. Just seconds after I set it, though, I hit the brakes as we bottlenecked at the pass (three lanes, instead of four each way) just east of San Bernardino. Things then went smoothly to Palm Springs.
By Palm Springs I was actually running low on gas, so I stopped at an Ultramar station (charging $.15 a gallon more than in Fontana) to fill up. This place didn't have credit card pumps, but like every station in California they insisted that you pay up front. I somewhat reluctantly left my credit card with the attendant inside the convenience store and went out to the pump. The counter had re-set to zeros, so I took the hose out of its holder and pressed the "START" button. Nothing happened. I tried pressing "START" again, but still nothing happened. I tried returning the nozzle and starting over, but still nothing happened. I went back inside and told the attendant that the pump wasn't working. He pressed the re-set button, and I tried again, but still nothing happened. I went back in and complained again. This time he finished a couple of other things he was doing and eventually came outside. He also tried to pull up the hose and press the "START" button, but still nothing happened. Eventually he realized that some joker had put the returned the three hoses on this pump to the wrong positions. I had pressed the "START" button for the cheap grade, but it was actually the pump for a more expensive grade that was resting in that position. He got the hoses in the correct spots and then had to go back inside and re-set the pump yet again. Finally things worked, and I was able to fill the car. I bought some very bad gas station coffee and set out on my way again.
It's interesting that he most smoggy area I drove through today was not Los Angeles or even the Inland Empire, but rather the Coachella Valley around Palm Springs. The valley is below sea level, and it sits in a bowl surrounded by fairly high mountains. Today the exhaust and industrial pollution that normally collect in that bowl were enhanced by a stiff wind blowing dust up from the surrounding desert.. I kept alternating between having my air conditioner on "fresh" and "re-circ", but both let in quite a bit more pollution than I wanted.
Civilization ends at Palm Springs. Well, technically not at Palm Springs. To be more precise, civilization ends at Indio, the larger but less-known city at the other end of the Coachella Valley. Here the interstate narrows from eight lanes to four, traffic thins to a trickle, signs advise that it is 40 miles until the next services, and the vast metroplex that is southern California finally yields to the even vaster desert. This is the low desert (classified by its low elevation), contrasted with the high desert to the north. It is both drier and hotter year round than the area by Victorville and Barstow. Without irrigation Palm Springs would also be total desert. Instead it stands out as an oasis of golf courses amid bone dry sandy mountains.
It's about a hundred miles across the desert from Indio to the Arizona border. The only "town" that whole way is the tiny hamlet of Desert Center, the "services" the signs at Indio refer to. It was 106 degrees at the gas station, and I'm sure it didn't get much cooler as I headed east. It did get progressively drier, though. Where by Palm Springs I'd see a few bushes and even an occasional tree beside the rule, as I drove eastward toward the Colorado River life dwindled to nearly nothing. I wondered if perhaps this area might have been pretty a month ago, much like the Mojave preserve that bloomed gorgeously in springtime. I don't think there's ever much vegetation in this part of the desert, though. Even if it did all bloom, I can't imagine there'd be much of a show.
I-10 crosses a series of passes as it heads eastward from Palm Springs. Much of central California is below sea level but there are mountains nearby that approach 6,000 feet. The passes aren't so high, but it makes for a steep climb nonetheless. At each pass there are signs advising that you should turn off your air conditioning to avoid overheating. That's tough to do in 100+ heat, but I faithfully followed directions and made it across safely. That's more than I can say for a lot of my fellow drivers. A sting of broken-down old clunkers lined the road between Indio and Blythe, more than I've seen almost anywhere. About half were abandoned; in others people were adding water to the radiator or just waiting for things to cool down. I'm not even close to being a mechanic, so I really couldn't help anyone out. I do hope they all got where they wanted to go without too much delay.
I arrived in Blythe around 6:30. ... I had made reservations at the Comfort Suites. ... In most locations I wouldn't be able to afford such an establishment. This was the middle of the desert, though, and it wasn't even close to high season (which would be around Christmas). The room still cost nearly double what I paid at the Motel 6 in Fontana (I paid around $60 in Blythe), but it was just barely within my budget. My rate was still a bargain compared to what people who just happened by paid. A man who had just decided to stop was in line at the desk when I showed up. He found out the rack rate was $89 per night. He bargained a bit (something I would never feel comfortable doing at a hotel), and eventually he accepted a "senior" rate of $79.
The place wad definitely worth at least what I paid. It was a new relatively new building with immaculate grounds. The place was built around an outdoor pool, with all the rooms facing the pool area and opening outdoors. I was on the second floor, which was definitely quieter than downstairs. I got an enormous room, with sort of a half wall partway through it that officially made it a "suite". There was a king-size bed bedroom part of the room, and a queen-size hide-a-bed plus a table and four chairs in the living room area (a bit more than the one bed and one tiny table at Motel 6). There was a huge dresser and a needlessly large TV with more cable stations than I could possibly want. There was a kitchenette with a microwave, coffee maker, and one of those little dorm refrigerators, and a sink area stocked with lots of unnecessary toiletries. The weak link in the place was definitely the bathroom, which was tiny and featured a low-flow fixtures. The toilet had to be flushed twice to actually work, and the shower that barely made a trickle on my back.
I got settled in my room and then went out to explore the area. There was a little strip mall a little ways east of the motel, and I spent some time at an Albertson's supermarket there. It intrigued me that while this was still California, it was the Phoenix newspaper that was for sale at the store.
Next I went to Foster's Freeze, a California institution that seems to have a branch everywhere in the state. You've probably figured out from the name that Foster's Freeze specializes in ice cream. It might as well be Dairy Queen or Tastee Freez or any of those other soft serve shacks. I gather that they had a offered a full menu long before the "brazier" was added on at D.Q., though. You may remember the old song "Fun, Fun, Fun":
She got her daddy's car, and she cruised to the hamburger stand now;
She forgot all about the library like she told her old man now ...
Several sources tell me that the hamburger stand referred to in that song was a Foster's Freeze. More specifically, they refer to one in Downey, an old suburb near the industrial hell of east L.A. The one in Blythe seemed little changed since the '50s, though, and I could easily imagine teeny-boppers from the early days of rock and roll congregating here. In honor of nostalgia, I ordered an old-fashion (no "-ed" at the end of it)-basically a cheeseburger-and a chocolate malt.
While "Fun, Fun, Fun" goes back to the '50s, in Blythe at least Foster's Freeze is still a teen hang-out in the 21st Century. The night was just starting when I got there, but already there were teenagers there. By 9:00 the parking lot would be full of high school kids parked at the most exciting place Blythe had to offer. They reminded me a lot of [the kids you see today in Iowa]--anorexic-looking boys who shave their chests and legs and wear oversized shorts that reveal their designer boxers flirting with girls in too much make-up who stuff their slightly chubby figures into tank tops and pedal-pushers two sizes too small. Most of the kids were white, but there were also Hispanic and Asian kids with spiky bleached hair, pierced bellies, and tattooed ankles. It was amusing to me that almost no one in L.A. looked or dressed this way (they looked much more "normal" by comparison), but out here in the sticks they were slaves to the same "up-and-coming" fashion that [rural Midwestern] kids follow.
I went back to the motel and made my way up to my room. I put my key card in the reader and moved the latch, but the door was jammed. Like most motel rooms, this one had a brass security latch near the top of the door that you could close to keep people from entering while you were in the room. You also have to open that latch to leave the room, supposedly making it impossible to accidentally shut without you in the room. This latch was loose, though. Somehow while I was closing the door or while I was out, it came out, locking the door permanently shut, even for those with a key.
I went down to the office and attempted to explain the problem to the manager, a south Asian gentleman who didn't seem to speak English all that clearly. I got a "yes! yes!" out of him, but then had to wait while he checked in a couple of customers and dealt with an ever-ringing phone. My hamburger was getting cold and the malt was getting warm, so I proceeded to have dinner right there in the motel lobby. Eventually the manager put a "be right back" sign on the door, locked things up, and went upstairs to check things out. He confirmed what was wrong and then spent about fifteen minutes working. What he basically did was to jimmy the window and break in like a criminal. It actually surprised me a bit that the sliding window here didn't have a security bar across the bottom Most motels I've stayed in do, making the window basically decoration rather than something you'd open. I guess it was a good thing that this room was comparatively easy to break into, though. At least that way he didn't have to break the glass. At any rate he got the window to open and then hopped in the room and flipped the security latch back so the door would open. I thanked him, and I pondered whether I should offer a tip. I didn't, since it really seemed this was the fault of the motel to begin with.
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* * * * *
[I got up early], crossed the Colorado River, and almost immediately on entering Arizona I saw my first cactus of the trip. Little saguaros that looked like the belonged on the neon sign for a Mexican restaurant lined I-10 for most of the hundred miles between the border and metro Phoenix. There wasn't much else of note; indeed, there's really not much of anything at all in between Blythe and Phoenix. The sign at the border lists three destinations:
QUARTZITE 17
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The distances may not be quite accurate, but you get the idea. "Rest Area" is a common destination in Arizona, probably because there's not much of anything else to make a destination. The next town past Quartzite is Tonopah, which is at Exit 94 and almost into metro Phoenix. It's not much of a town, either.
I took Exit 112 (and might I add it was nice to be back into a state that actually had exit numbers). Highway 85 is heavily signed from the interstate as "PHOENIX TRUCK BY-PASS" and "TO I-8 ... TUCSON - EL PASO". Phoenix doesn't really have a beltway, though they're starting to build one to the north of the city. Most through traffic wants to go south and east, though. Interstate 10 goes right straight through downtown and also involves nearly a hundred miles of urban driving. State highway 85 is mostly two lanes, but it completely avoids Phoenix and would almost certainly be a preferable route for truckers headed east. I wasn't headed for either Tucson or El Paso, but after pausing briefly to buy gas ($1.89 a gallon) in Buckeye, I joined the line of trucks headed down route 85.
85 leads to Gila Bend, presumably named after a bend in the Gila River. This is a ratty little town (population 1,600) whose sole purpose for existence is serving as a service center on the interstate. I-8 runs through here on its way from Tucson to San Diego, and everybody who drives that road seems to stop in Gila Bend for gas, supplies, or lodging. It's really not a very pleasant place, and I just crossed the interstate and continued heading south.
Gila Bend marks the start of the "border" region between the U.S. and Mexico. This is, in fact, historically almost a no-man's land. The Gila River (which occasionally trickles from Phoenix southwest to Yuma, on the California border) was originally the southern boundary of the western United States and the northern boundary of Mexico. Then in 1853 the Gadsden Purchase added an area the size of Pennsylvania to the United States, significantly increasing the size of Arizona and New Mexico and giving the southwest a straight-line border with Mexico. The purchase was made largely to satisfy the business ambitions of the Southern Pacific Railroad, who wanted to build a line from Florida to California via the path of least resistance. President Pierce appointed James Gadsden, a representative of that company, U.S. Minister to Mexico, and he proceeded to negotiate the treaty that bears his name. We bought this area for $10 million dollars, which was certainly a hefty sum in the mid 1800s. Today that land includes the entire Tucson metro area, as well as Casa Grande, Nogales, and lots and lots of desert. The railroad still runs through here, too. I crossed it several times over the course of the day.
Almost immediately south of Gila Bend you enter the Barry Goldwater Gunnery Range, an air force facility. I'm not sure what exactly they do there (and I probably don't want to know), but I suppose it's better that they do it out in the middle of nowhere than someplace closer to people. 85 is the only real road through the range. The occasional gravel crossroads all have "ROAD CLOSED" signs at their entrances. There's nothing blocking people from going in, but I wasn't about to take my chances by doing so.
I started noticing a few flowers in the gunnery range. Even with 100+ degree temperatures, the cactus was in bloom, and there were little daisy-like flowers lining the side of the road. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was beautiful, but it did at least make the ride a bit more interesting.
The signs from Gila Bend southward give directions to three places: Ajo, Lukeville, and Puerto Peñasco. Lukeville (which isn't really a town) is the Mexican border, and Puerto Peñasco ... is on the Gulf of California well inside Mexico. Just south of the gunnery range I made it to Ajo (AH-hoe, the word means "garlic" in Spanish), one of the nicest places I went on this trip. The town center reminded me of a little Mexican town, with a gorgeous adobe church and commercial buildings lining a formal plaza. That makes sense, since the town dates back to before the Gadsden Purchase. This once was a little Mexican town that has grown into being an American town. There are old adobe houses right at the center, with pleasant modern homes just a little further out. Beyond there is a modern strip with all the requisite conveniences and a few little suburban housing developments. The big industry here is mining, something I could tell from a smelter they tried to hide with ornamental trees and from miles of tailings lining the road south of town. It was a pretty and prosperous town, though-definitely more attractive than other mining towns I've seen. If it had been about twenty degrees cooler, I might have paused a bit and actually explored.
There's a town of sorts a little ways south of Ajo called Why. I could imagine the name came from someone thinking "Why in ___ would anyone try to build a town here?" It certainly is an unlikely location, at the edge of an Indian reservation in the middle of a very remote desert. There is a gas station, a motel (of sorts), and a place to buy Mexican auto insurance, plus about three mobile homes.
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Just a few miles south of Why I saw signs that made it look as if there was road construction ahead. A series of temporary signs slowed traffic first from 65 to 45, then to 35, 25, and 10 mph. There was no construction, though. Headed the other direction the Border Patrol had set up an inspection station. Northbound traffic had to actually stop; southbound they just slowed us down so we wouldn't run over the officers who were standing in the middle of the highway. As I passed they were using long mirrors to search underneath the body of one car, and they did a thorough inspection of the trunk of another. I made a mental note to be sure I was prepared for this on the way back north.
I'd heard of these border patrol stations. They are located twenty to fifty miles north of the border on main roads throughout the West. They are looking for two things: illegal aliens and drugs. Both of those in theory should be caught at the border itself, but it's no secret that vast quantities of both slip through. The stations inside the U.S. are located in "random" locations that can be opened or closed as the patrol wishes. That makes it a little harder for someone to just go around a station, because you can't say for certain where it will be.
Just beyond the inspection station was the entrance to my real destination of the morning, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. This has to be one of the park service's most isolated and least visited units. I remember when I used to gaze through atlases as a child finding the place on the map. The name sounded cool, and I always thought it would be interesting to go to. When this trip turned out not to be a trip to see baseball games, I figured I'd never be closer to the place than now, so I might as well go.
The monument was established by F.D.R. to preserve the organ pipe cactus, a plant that grows in a collection of vertical shafts that look somewhat vaguely like organ pipes-albeit fat, green organ pipes. This particular cactus is extremely sensitive to frost and humidity. It only grows in places that are extremely dry and where the temperature never goes below freezing. Very little of the country has both of those characteristics. In fact, extreme southern Arizona is pretty much the complete range of the plant in this country. (It also grows in the adjacent Sonoran Desert in Mexico.) There really aren't very many organ pipe cactus plants in the national monument. Most of the cacti here are saguaros or barrel cactus, and by far the most common plant is the yellow-flowering creosote bush. All the vegetation was interesting, though, and I was surprised to see almost everything in bloom-in spite of the horrific heat.
It was very hot. Say what you will about it being "a dry heat" in the desert, it was just hell today. At 10am the official temperature at the visitor's center was 103o, and they had a high of 114o yesterday. They take those temperatures five feet off the ground, and they note that the actual afternoon ground temperature is typically 40 - 50 degrees hotter than the air temperature. The highest ground temperature they've ever recorded here was 176o, which I'm sure would fry an egg-it would nearly boil water. There's a huge network of trails around the monument, and I'm sure many of them are lovely. With the heat, though, all I did was the very brief nature center right by the visitor's center. It was barely the length of a football field, but given the weather it was more than enough for me.
Short though it may have been, the nature trail was fascinating. They had a guidebook that identified all the desert wildlife and described it in great detail. It made me much more aware of what I saw from the highway and made me appreciate a bit more just what a variety of life there actually is in the desert. It's still not like I'd be comfortable living in the desert, but I did learn a lot more about it.
The nature trail basically walks you out from the visitor's center to he highway and back. A string of cars passed both directions on the highway, but no one stopped at the visitor's center the whole time I was there. I was the third person of the day to sign the guest register (the other two were from Paris, France), and the people at the desk seemed surprised to see me. As I pulled out another car pulled into the parking lot, but they just quickly used the restroom and left.
I picked up a fascinating book at the visitor's center gift shop. It was an "up close and personal" look at life on the border. The author had been born in Tijuana to an American mother, and he went back to the border region as an adult to work as a missionary. The organization he volunteers for, a vaguely Baptist group called Spectrum Ministries, makes a big deal of putting "works first"--doing God's work, rather than just preaching. They try to minister to people in ways that can actually help them here and now. I read On the Wire on during my flights back to Des Moines. While the author doesn't pretend to be neutral (the chapters were apparently originally published in San Diego's version of those free liberal newspapers you see on the street), he does a pretty good job of portraying people and events on both sides of the border. It seemed an appropriate book to buy here, and I'm glad I did.
I drove south from the visitor's center to about 1/2 mile from the Mexican border. I stopped and turned around when I reached the "STOP AHEAD" signs for U.S. Customs. I figured that especially with heightened security I didn't want to get in any problems at the border. As far as I could tell the only thing in Lukeville is the customs office. On the other side is Sonoyta, Mexico, a substantial if rather nasty-looking town. I can't imagine the place drawing anyone for more than a couple of minutes, and I'd bet most people just drive on through en route to the coast or to Hermosillo.
* * * * *
Turning north from Lukeville, there was a sign advising me to watch for wildlife on the road for the next 42 miles. Other signs continued to count down that distance until it was about 5 miles to go. It's interesting that the end of the wildlife watch is the border of the gunnery range. I'm not sure if the bombing killed off all the wildlife or if they've set up fences along the road (none were visible), but I apparently didn't have to worry about having an animal hit my car while on Air Force land.
I stopped at the Border Patrol checkpoint. In front of me was a motorhome that they were searching rather intensely, so I was expecting almost anything. The officer took a quick glance at my car and said "U.S. Citizen?" I nodded, and he waved me on. I had sort of strategically placed the National Monument brochure on the passenger's seat to identify myself as a tourist. Perhaps he saw that, or perhaps he just recognized me for the honest American I was.
I bought gas in Ajo ($1.74 per gallon) and then went back north to Gila Bend. The stretch of 85 just south of Gila Bend, between town and the gunnery range, is full of those crosses people erect when someone is killed in an accident. There was even one little shrine that looked like a concrete doghouse with a Guadalupe statue at the entrance. The road didn't seem any less safe here than anywhere else, but apparently they've had a lot of problems.
I had gotten a Dairy Queen gift certificate for helping out at Garrigan's prom, so I decided to stop for lunch at Dairy Queen in Gila Bend. I was reminded of visiting Steve when he lived in New Mexico. The employees here were all Native Americans. I don't know what tribe they were, but they were definitely Indian, not Hispanic. I described the concept of "Navajo time" when I wrote about the Four Corners area when Steve lived here. There are no Navajo anywhere near Gila Bend, but obviously the local tribe has the same concept of time. To say the service was slow would be barely scratching the surface; it took a full half hour before I had gotten my food (a barbecue sandwich and a blizzard), and there were only three other customers in the place.
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Southwest Arizona is boring. I know that sounds like a petty teenager, but [heading west on I-8] was a dull afternoon drive. I'm sure they put the railroad here because the land was flat-it most certainly is. The road is straight, too. There's not much traffic running from Tucson to San Diego, so it was pretty empty in addition to being straight. Beside the road I saw mostly irrigated agriculture. They grow cotton here, as well as a variety of vegetables I didn't recognize. The overall effect had all the excitement of driving in North Dakota.
We sort of played tag with the railroad most of the way from Gila Bend to Yuma. Eventually, though, it separated from us. I assume it must have followed a relatively flat canyon that was too narrow to build a freeway through. The freeway was blasted through a rugged pass, which came as a surprise after all the flatness of the day. I wove up and up and then down and down through scenic red rock mountains and finally came to the outskirts of Yuma.
Yuma today is basically a big suburb without a city. . It reminded me a lot of Sioux Falls. There is a downtown; in fact, I stayed there. It's not much. Yuma has the downtown of a city of maybe 5,000 people when in fact it has 100,000. The whole city is walled housing developments and strip business. Except for downtown, the whole place looks like it's been built in the past twenty years. It's not an unpleasant place, but I always sort of wonder about places where there's not any real "city" to the city.
My first stop in Yuma was at the Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Site. Exactly what the name implies, the prison was actually built by the first convicts to occupy it. 3,040 men and 29 women were incarcerated here over the next 33 years. It was an important detention center in the old west, and many of the convicts were apparently famous (though I can't say I'd heard of many of them). The cells look remarkably like those in a modern prison (after all, Ft. Madison wasn't built much later than that), except that they crammed six bunks into the space that today you'd probably see two. There's a nice prison yard, though I'd think it would be punishment enough to just be out in the heat there. The main special punishment was the so-called "dark cell", an Alcatraz-like apparatus where prisoners were literally caged inside a completely black room. The prison rapidly became overcrowded (amazing they should have those problems in the 19th Century), and it closed down in 1909, when the last prisoners were moved to a new institution. There is still a state correctional facility near Yuma, but today Arizona has prisons all over the state.
One fascinating tidbit I found out was that when the prison closed the buildings were taken over to house the local high school. To this day the Yuma High athletic teams bear the name "Criminals", though apparently most of their fans just call them the "Crims".
There's a park area in front of the cellblocks. I think originally it was the site of an administrative building, but now it's empty. It overlooks the river, and the view is really nice. There are three bridges here: the metal truss Southern Pacific railroad bridge, the stylish old auto bridge for the Ocean to Ocean Highway (my bet is this was once U.S. 90, which today officially ends in Texas), and the modern I-8 bridge. A fourth bridge (4th Avenue) was hidden by Interstate 8. The Colorado really isn't very big here, since a large part of its water has been diverted to supply California and Phoenix, but it is still an important river.
I took a bit of a hike outside the prison grounds. It was still hot (right at 100), but I figured I'd only be here once and I might as well see what there was. One trail leads to the prison cemetery, where most of the 111 prisoners who died here are buried. There's also a nature trail that leads mast a cactus garden and then down into a forest area next to the river. It was nice to see real trees again, and they made things just a little bit cooler as I hiked.
After seeing the prison I crossed the I-8 bridge back into California and then almost immediately exited and crossed the 4th Avenue bridge back to Arizona. My destination was the Best Western Coronado, which I booked because it was cheap. It turned out to be an interesting motel with a little bit of a history. It turns out that this was one of the original twenty motels that banded together after World War II to form the Best Western chain. This particular motel dates to the Depression, though it's been cared for remarkably well. Indeed, I've stayed in places built in the '80s that were in worse shape. It was built in three little one-floor stucco courts. Not only was there parking in front of each room, but each room had its own little garden and tree out front. My room was remarkably large, but otherwise pretty standard. The thing that stood out was that there was a Jacuzzi bath in the bathroom (together with a bad low-flow shower), and of course I had to try that out. The most negative thing about the room was that it was very dimly lit. There were lamps all over the place, but no overhead lighting and nothing that seemed to have more than about a 40-watt bulb....
After relaxing a bit in the air conditioning, I walked a little ways north on 4th Avenue. About three blocks away was another state park, Yuma Crossing State Historic Site. I must confess that even after spending nearly an hour at the place I was at a loss to figure out just what they were preserving. The people who took my money were mum about it, and very little on the rather spacious grounds had informative signs. Let me quote from the brochure I probably should have read before I started walking around:
Yuma Crossing State Historic Park, site of the Yuma Quartermaster Depot, was used by the U.S. Army to store and distribute supplies for all the military posts in Arizona, and posts in Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Texas. A six month supply of clothing, food, ammunition, and other goods was kept at the depot at all times. The supplies were brought from California by ocean vessels traveling around the Baja Peninsula to Port Isabel near the mouth of the Colorado River. There, cargos were transferred to river steamers and brought upstream to Yuma.
That one paragraph told me more than anything I found out while I was actually at the place. From the signs around the place, I read mostly about a 19th Century flood control project and the fact that in 1877 the Southern Pacific ended up building its line right on top of the levee. I honestly figured the place was basically there to honor the Corps of Engineers.
Perhaps what confused me is that the old storehouse is still a storehouse, but not quite in the same sense that the Army used it for. This immense old barn is full of assorted junk that the Arizona Parks Department has come in possession of, but hasn't figured out how to use. There was, for example, a complete set of furniture from the waiting room of a train depot as well as a collection of hideous Victorian paintings in gilded frames and rocks that I assume have geological or archaeological significance. They let visitors walk through and see it, but none of the mess is organized or explained.
The most interesting thing in the park (something I notice isn't even mentioned in their brochure) is the commanding officer's quarters, which happens to be the oldest Anglo-built structure in the Southwest. They also have an old steam engine that you can actually go inside of to see what things looked like to the engineer. They have a nice grounds area, too, with a modern shelter house and meting area. It was certainly not worth the $4 admission, but then I've frequently spent my money in stupider ways.
* * * * *
I pretty much wasted the evening. I read the Sunday papers from Phoenix and Yuma/El Centro (which seems to consider itself the same place, even though the two cities are a hundred miles apart). I also watched scandalous biographies of teen celebrities on the E! cable network and relaxed in the Jacuzzi. The one annoying part of the evening was the people in the room next door. A father had brought his two sons on what came across as a camping trip, even though they were staying in a motel. They had set up a grill in the parking lot outside their room, and they spent most of the evening sitting around it on lawn chairs barbecuing. They roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, and they heated a can of pork and beans on the grill. I really wondered why they didn't just go to a campground, but I suppose there they'd have to deal with the fact that it was still 104o into the evening. Here they could keep escaping into the air conditioned room. I'd have just written them off as strange, except that the fumes from the grill wafted straight into the intake for my room's air conditioner. I'd swear they must have used a whole can of lighter fluid, because I certainly smelled the stuff all night long.
I set the clock radio at the motel to wake me at 6am, and it faithfully did so. A complementary hot breakfast came with the room, so around 6:30 I made my way to the motel restaurant. I'm used to staying at cheap motels where most people leave early, so it was a bit of a surprise that I was the only person there. Even so, the bacon and eggs came across as pre-cooked and plastic; I'd hate to think what it must have been like by 9:00.
The restaurant ... was fascinating. They advertise as if they provide Yuma's finest dining experience. The décor is straight out of the '70s, with heavy Mediterranean-style tables surrounding an oversized brass salad bar. The walls were covered in a dusty green velvet wallpaper, and above each table they've hung the sort of fake Tiffany lamp you might see in a pancake house. Mine was hung too low; I bumped it twice. Adding to the eclectic atmosphere are televisions hung from the ceiling in every spare corner. I suppose they try to bring in the sports bar crowd at night. At breakfast, though, the TVs were blaring Spanish music videos.
I complained about the barbecuing family as I checked out of the motel. I don't want them to get into serious trouble, but I do hope they at least get a little lecture. I would think if nothing else they were surely violating fire codes or something, on top of annoying their neighbors.
I took 4th Avenue back across the Colorado into California. On the California side is the home of the Ft. Yuma Indian Reservation. Two things stand out here. First there were old Indian men who seemed to permanently position themselves at the I-8 entrance ramps begging. Second was the Winterhaven Casino, a garish monstrosity I could see at night from my motel in Yuma. I always thought the casinos were supposed to be a way to solve the problems of poverty on Indian reservations; the contrast here would seem to show that things didn't go as planned.
* * * * *
Just a little ways west of Yuma I came to a fascinating area I didn't even know I would be passing through, the Imperial Dunes area. In ancient times this region was the beach for the Gulf of California. The Imperial Valley west of here is well below sea level, and it used to be underwater ("used to be" in the sense of geological time). The earthquakes for which California is known lifted up a collection of low mountains in what now separates Baja from the main part of Mexico. The valley dried out, but its beach remains as dunes. There's a state park here, which mostly seems to be used by off-road vehicle enthusiasts. There's also a rest area sandwiched in the median of the interstate that provides a pleasant view of the area.
* * * * *
I followed I-8 westward, and for much of the way I drove right along the Mexican border. I have a large-scale map at home that shows that at one point the interstate goes within half a mile of the border, and it's never more than about five miles away. I can't say I saw anything that stood out as "border", though. At one point I saw an empty road to the south that had to have been in Mexico, but that was pretty much it. This area doesn't even have the infamous fence you hear about. It's rugged and arid and not especially close to anywhere, so I suppose they don't feel quite the need to fence things in that they do in San Diego or El Paso. This is, however, where many illegal aliens enter the U.S., and apparently at night the Border Patrol has helicopters flying all over the place here training lights on the people who are trying to get in. It looked like it would be pretty easy to cross the border in the morning, but of course then you'd have to find a way to actually get somewhere before you literally died in the heat of the day.
There's a sign marking sea level past the sand dunes, and beyond there the region rapidly becomes agricultural. It's weird agriculture, though. In many cases they don't actually plant crops in the soil itself. Instead they run big plastic tubes along the ground that are filled with mulch or something similar. The crops grow in that, with their roots never actually reaching into the ground. I think they run the irrigation right through those plastic things, too. It reminded me of those portable flower garden things they sell on TV. You unroll the thing on your lawn and water it. In a few weeks the flowers are supposed to bloom. Then when they die you just roll the thing back up and throw it away. The fields here are huge, too; these farms would dwarf even the biggest corporate agricultural enterprises in Iowa. You don't have the county roads every mile like you do here, so a single field can stretch on literally for miles. I assume most of the crops were salad vegetables; I didn't recognize most of them. I did see a bit of corn and a few vineyards (for table grapes, I think). There were also some stands of olive trees that reminded me of Spain.
You don't see farm houses in California like you do in Iowa. The landowners tend to live in utter palaces surrounded by razor wire. There aren't many of those, though; people who do own land own a lot of it. The workers (and farming here is very labor intensive) live in little villages of often windowless barracks about as far away from the owners as you can get.. They look remarkably similar to hog confinements, but it's people who live there. It reminded me of the old plantations in Dixie, with the big house and the sharecroppers' shacks. The South came across as friendlier, though, since it would violate Southern hospitality to put an unfriendly fence around your home.
Besides the agriculture, one other thing stood out about the Imperial Valley: pollution. This region's air made Los Angeles look pristine. The locals will tell you that most of the pollution comes from Mexicali, one of Mexico's largest cities which is located on the border about ten miles south of here. I'm sure that's true, but America supplies plenty of the grime as well. I have no idea what industry there is in El Centro, but there were plenty of smokestacks billowing pollution skyward. Wherever it comes from, the pollution all catches in this below sea level bowl. Being desert, they don't get much rain to cleanse the air, so it just keeps getting dirtier and dirtier.
I exited I-8 just before El Centro and headed northward on state highway 111. This is one of those roads that will eventually be four lanes. For now it goes in sections. You're on freeway for a while, then you exit and drive a crowded two-lane for a while, then there's another little stretch of freeway, then the old road again. It's not unlike what Highway 218 has been in eastern Iowa the past few years, and a lot of roads in Missouri seem permanently that way. Whether on good road or bad, basically I headed past more farms as I made my way north.
It struck me as I drove along that the one thing missing from all the farms here was animals. Everything I'd seen this morning was row crops, no cattle or hogs or chickens. Then I came to one of the largest beef lots I've ever seen. I have no idea how many cattle they raise there, but the place is truly enormous. Only once in Colorado did I pass an animal facility that was larger. Right next to the beef lot is a power plant that uses manure to generate electricity. I suppose that's a good use for it, since they're not spreading the stuff as fertilizer on those plastic farms.
I passed through Brawley and Calipatria, big service towns that were not unlike Midwestern county seats. Between the two I crossed the New River, which I had read was the most polluted body of water in the United States. The New River is well named. It didn't exist historically but was basically created as a drain for agricultural run-off. Today it also serves as an open sewer for much of Mexicali. I can't say I noticed any more of a smell than I had from the general pollution in the area, but the river certainly is ugly-dark green and brown in streaks, with a bit of an oily look to it. I remember hearing about the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland catching on fire when I was a child. That river, like most of the East, has been cleaned up in the intervening years. I went to Cleveland a few years back, and while no one will ever call the waterfront beautiful, at least it isn't a toxic waste dump. I could easily see the New River burning, and I hate to think just what chemicals all those farm workers are being exposed to.
I had gotten used to the air pollution driving through the area. Then, a little ways north of Calipatria, I got a strong whiff of sulfur. It was the paper mill smell I remembered from Canada and from my grad school days in Mississippi (the Scott company has a big toilet tissue plant in Hattiesburg). This wasn't a paper mill, though, and it wasn't exactly pollution. What I was smelling was the Salton Sea.
The Salton Sea is a huge body of water that was created by accident. In the late 1800s early developers built the first irrigation canals to bring water to the Imperial Valley from the Colorado River. Then in 1905 there was a huge flood on the Colorado. Billions of gallons of water came pouring through the irrigation canals and settled into the basin here, the floor of which is nearly 300 feet below sea level. About half of the original floodwater has evaporated in the past century, but the sea continues to be fed by agricultural run-off. Today the enormous saltwater lake extends about 40 miles through the desert in south central California. It has become important environmentally, because as the Pacific coast becomes more and more developed, this is just about the only place left where birds and other coastal wildlife can go about their business in peace. The Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge (Cher's first husband was the Congressman from this district until he died) is one of the largest bird sanctuaries on earth.
The sea has serious environmental problems, though. It is much saltier than the ocean itself, and with no outlet it just continues to get more saline. I couldn't find a truly balanced commentary on the sea, but there's a good possibility that if left unchecked in another century (some extremists say in another ten years) the place might be unable to support fish. It's main source of incoming water is that desperately polluted New River. That's causing the same problems that pollution caused to Lake Erie when I was a child. There's excessive algae growth, and when the plant life decays it produces that "wonderful" smell that was perfuming the air.
There's a state park that runs the length of the Salton Sea. I pulled into the first of its many locations, Bombay Beach. I paid $4 for a receipt that would admit me to all the units of the park, and got an "FAQ" sheet from a ranger who was checking registrations of fishermen on the beach. I then made my way in slow motion up the shore, stopping briefly at all the state park pull-offs.
The sea is really quite pretty, and they have nice recreational facilities developed all along it. It's quite underused, though. I'd expect that on a holiday weekend a lake like this would be swarming with people. There were just a handful of fishermen and a couple of campers, though. I can't say that I blame them. It would take quite a bit to get used to that smell.
North of the Salton Sea is the Coachella Valley, another important agricultural area. This is different from the Imperial Valley, though. Here they mostly grow fruit. They grow some citrus: lemons, oranges, and grapefruit also neatly planted in rows. The biggest crop by far, though, is dates. I passed farm after farm with date palms growing in neat rows. There are roadside stands where they sell dates, and the restaurants around here advertise everything imaginable made with dates. Most bizarre was date milkshakes, which everyone around here seems to be pushing. I'm not a big date fan to begin with, and I'd think I'd truly gag on a milkshake made with them.
The farm service towns along here are Thermal and Coachella, which looked much like Brawley and Calipatria to the south. Then before long I reached the "big city" of Indio and the start of the Palm Springs metroplex. Indio is where the people who work in Palm Springs live. With about 70,000 people it's by far the largest of the string of cities in the valley. The people here are almost exclusively Hispanic, and everything here is geared to them. The billboards, for example, are mostly in Spanish in Indio. It had been a while since the bacon and eggs in Yuma, so I stopped at another Winchell's doughnut shop in Indio. The woman at the counter spoke English (sort of), but she obviously wasn't expecting to deal with an Anglo customer.
Doughnut shops are very common in California. The only place I think I've seen more of them is Chicago, where there seems to be a Dunkin' Donuts on every corner. I'd always thought of California as a health-conscious place, but I got almost the opposite feeling when I was actually there. In addition to the deep-fried breakfast fare, they're proud to be the place that invented super-sized fast food. The average people here are certainly in no better shape than they are elsewhere; indeed, if anything I'd judge them a bit chunkier than most Midwesterners. One place they do earn health points, though, is that very few Californians smoke. I saw some smokers, but far fewer than in Chicago-or Algona, for that matter. To their credit, though, they're not preachy about smoking (like, for instance, yuppie Minnesotans). They've just made smoking expensive and inconvenient, and in the process most people gave it up.
Highway 111 is the main drag through the Palm Springs resort area. Beyond Indio I passed through La Quinta, Indian Wells, Palm Desert, Cathedral City, and finally Palm Springs. The only way to tell one from another is that the street signs change colors. The whole area is quite lovely-manicured golf courses, elegant housing developments, meticulously maintained strip business, and resort hotels. The whole place is geared to tourists. Summer is definitely low season, but even with the heat they manage to pull in a lot of visitors. Just last week, for instance, President Ford passed out on a golf course in Cathedral City. Golf seems to be the raison d'etre for the resorts. There are golf courses all over the place, and everything seems to have a vaguely "golf-ish" theme. The main streets, for instance, are named after celebrities who were also known for their golf game: Dinah Shore Drive, Gene Autry Trail, Monty Hall Road, etc.
Except for Indio (where real people live), the whole area has to be just about the wealthiest place in America. I'm sure those celebrities could afford to retire here and pursue their golf game, but I certainly couldn't. I never checked what real estate went for here, but I'd imagine it would be well beyond my price range. Everything is pretty, though.
* * * * *
I stopped at a Shell Station ($1.83/gallon) by the airport so I could return the rental car with a full tank. After filling the credit card machine asked if I wanted a receipt. I, of course, selected "yes"; I can't imagine why you wouldn't want a receipt. It then asked if I wanted an "ultra wash" for $8.95. I chose "no". Next I was offered a "super wash" for $6.95. Again I pressed "no". I was then offered a "deluxe wash" for $4.95 and finally a "car wash" for $2.95. I kept pressing "no", laughing as they kept lowering the price. Finally the machine printed my receipt, and I was on my way.
The rental car return area was much easier to get to than in Ontario, but the process of returning the car was just a bit more complicated. A Hispanic man outdoors asked to see my rental papers. He then checked the mileage and took my word that I had filled the tank. He initialed the contract and sent me inside to the counter. There an Asian woman punched a few buttons on her computer and printed me out a receipt.
I checked in at the United counter without incident. There was a long line at security ..., but it moved very quickly. They had everybody remove their shoes to have them X-rayed. That meant almost no one set off the metal detector, so they didn't have to do a lot of extra screening.
Palm Springs Airport (or more specifically the Sonny Bono Memorial Concourse) is weird. Almost everything is outdoors. It's beautifully landscaped and lined with palm trees, and I'm sure it's lovely in winter. It wasn't really where I wanted to wait when it was 106 degrees, though. Some of the gates have only outdoor waiting. There's a fence separating the concourse from the tarmac, and they open up a gate in the fence to let people out to the planes. At other gates they have little boxy structures where you can wait in air conditioning. These all have sliding doors activated by electric eyes, and whenever someone walks past on the concourse--whether they want to go in or not--the door opens. That was a good thing in that it sent cool air out to the concourse, but I'd hate to think what their air conditioning bill must be.
The concessions are mostly outdoors, too. Some of them have an air conditioned counter area, but you pretty much have to eat al fresco at umbrella tables. I got chili and a salad at the Desert Classic Grille, one of the many golf-themed concessions. The food was ridiculously overpriced (picture a $15 lunch) and not especially tasty. I also got some $3 coffee at a little stand on the concourse. I annoyed the very rude attendant at the coffee bar by paying with the last of my quarters and then annoyed him more by not leaving anything in the tip jar he had strategically placed on the counter. He certainly wasn't suffering, though. The person behind me, who ordered the same coffee I did, left a dollar in the jar (a 33% tip for counter service).
The only real store in the secure part of the area is the PGA Pro Shop, which doubles as a newsstand and gift shop. I picked up a coffee mug, a T-shirt, and a pair of shorts-all of which were being closed out dirt cheap. The woman at the check-out asked where I was headed. I said I was going back home to the Midwest, and she asked me where exactly I was from. When I said Iowa she nearly dropped. She was originally from Clear Lake. Apparently her husband manages a mobile home park in Indio, and she works here at the airport. She made it very clear that she didn't like the place much. In particular, she couldn't stand the heat. "It's not even a dry heat," she said, "what with all those golf courses being watered all the time."
They had TVs all over the airport showing arrivals and departures, and above the desk at Gate 3 (where I was supposed to depart), there was a computer read-out of the next several flights. For no reason anyone could figure out Flight 5210 to Denver never made it to the departures list. The computer read-out showed flights to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Honolulu leaving from this gate-but nothing to Denver. The TV showed departures for cities as diverse as Fairbanks and Acapulco, but the only flight to Denver was on Frontier Airlines and wouldn't be leaving until evening. Person after person went up to the counter, and over and over again the clerk repeated that he didn't know what was wrong with the computer, but the flight would be leaving on time. I noticed later what was probably the problem. They had actually listed 5210 as an arrival from Denver, scheduled to arrive on-time at precisely the time we would be departing. The flight actually originated in Palm Springs, so someone had goofed up typing it in.
There were some interesting fellow passengers in the waiting area. Most fascinating was an elderly woman in a fur coat (in 106o weather) who was leading around two yapping poodles on leashes. I've never seen an animal other than a seeing-eye dog in an airport before, and I certainly wondered why she had these little monsters. Neither she nor the dogs boarded the flight for Denver, which was certainly a good thing from my point of view. I waited across from a yuppie couple and their son who were also interesting. What stood out was the son came across as the most mature of the threesome. It was, for instance, he who actually went to the counter to confirm that the flight to Denver was on time, when his parents just sat there fretting.
I was the third person through the gate when they called our flight for boarding. We had to wait outside the building until a plane for Los Angeles pulled away from the gate area. Then we walked up the stairs to another Canadair regional jet. The flight was uneventful. Every seat was full, but it didn't seem overly crowded. I read my book, inhaled my mini-bag of snack mix, and downed a cocktail glass of ginger ale. We had a lovely view of the Grand Canyon and another nice view of the San Juan Mountains in western Colorado. Then we landed right on time at 5:30 mountain time.
We pulled up to Concourse A, where a jetway led to the gate. I had to walk to the center of the concourse and then descend a series of escalators to the subway station below. ... I waited for what seemed like forever (though it was probably just 5 - 6 minutes) for the next one. I took the train (subway cars with no seats) over to Concourse B, walked back upstairs, and then took the moving walkways to Gate B-53.
There wasn't a lot of time before the flight to Des Moines departed, but I hoped to get just a bite to eat. There was a place right across from the gate with a "Sara Lee" sign above it that seemed to sell everything-pastry, ice cream, sandwiches, salads, soup, and drinks. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how you were supposed to get any of it. They had two cash registers at the center of the place, but it wasn't set up like cafeteria lines. Instead all the food was facing the workers, not the customers. I think perhaps you were supposed to catch the attention of someone behind the counters, have them get your food, and then either they or you took it to the check-outs. I never did figure it out, and I got yelled a guy at the cash register when I tried to give him my order. I figured if they must not want my business, so I just left. I bought a bottle of juice from a little stand nearby, and that plus the snack mix on the plane was my dinner.
There was exactly one empty seat on the plane to Des Moines, the window seat (9-A) in the row directly in front of me. A woman in the row behind me noticed that seat and complained and complained to the stewardess. Apparently she had requested not to be placed in a center seat, but the attendant who checked her in said that there were no windows or aisles available. "He was lying to me!" she exclaimed to the poor girl who just had to put up with her. She kept on whining about it for nearly five full minutes. The stewardess explained that the couple in Row 9 had tickets for the window and aisle seats, but they chose to sit next to each other instead. She also politely suggested that if the woman wanted, she could move to the vacant seat. The bitchy woman would have none of that, though. I really never did figure out what she did want, other than to be a bother.
Making this whole scene even sillier was the fact that the whining woman was seated in an exit row. That row had only two seats on each side of the plane, instead of the standard three. While hers was technically a center seat, there was no window seat next to her. That meant she had far more room than anyone else on the plane. I'd have gladly traded seats with her, but all she wanted to do was complain.
In his welcome announcements, the pilot pointed out that we could listen to all the tower communications on Channel 9 on the headsets. That interested me, and it made a fascinating way to pass the time. Pretty much everything was routine; the most interesting things were just how many flights they keep track of at once and how many different command centers handle each flight. The Denver tower gave us clearance for take-off (on our choice of one of two runways) and got us up in the air. They then told us to "Climb and maintain 26 [thousand feet], then contact Denver Center." Denver Center (as opposed to Denver Tower) handles in-air flights across the Plains. They told us to climb and maintain 31, and then pretty much ignored us until we were told to contact Minneapolis Center. Minneapolis had us start our descent and then handed us off to Des Moines Tower, which brought us in for landing. When the Denver tower and center each flight, they ended their transmission with "good day, gentlemen - have a good flight", to which the pilot responded "good day, ma'am" or "good day, sir", depending on the sex of the controller (the pilots all seem to be men). Minneapolis did the same thing, but the time frame had changed to "good evening, gentlemen", and the response was "good night".
* * * * *
We landed in Des Moines about 9pm, roughly 20 minutes early. United brags about being the #1 on-time airline. I think they must pad their schedule a lot. We were early on three out of four flights, and I'd think even if there were minor problems we'd have been able to be on time.
I had checked my main bag in Palm Springs, so I had to go to baggage claim to get it. It really wasn't very long (maybe ten minutes) before the bag arrived, but again it seemed like forever. Things really do go quicker when you just have carry-ons. I took the shuttle back to the economy lot, got my car, and paid $22 for five days and a few hours of parking. I attempted to exit the airport the way I had come in, but "EMPLOYEES ONLY" signs forced me to do a U-turn and go out a different exit.
My original plan was to drive back to Algona tonight. Just before I left, though, I got a statement in the mail that showed that I had earned a free night's stay at Choice Hotels. I decided to make a reservation at the Comfort Inn-Des Moines Airport and do the driving in daylight. I drove about two blocks north and parked my car.
The Comfort Inn-Des Moines Airport obviously isn't a place people often cash in free motel stays. This is the sort of place businessmen go to earn those points that lead to free stays. Then they go to places like Palm Springs or Las Vegas to cash them in. The desk clerk seemed very surprised that I was using my free night in Des Moines. He managed to do the paperwork efficiently, though, and he even upgraded me to a "suite" that was roughly equivalent to the room I had in Blythe...
I settled into bed pretty quickly and got a reasonably good night's sleep.
I got up around 6:15 and breakfasted (sort of) at the skimpy bagel bar they had in the hotel lobby. It was rush hour as I left Des Moines, but with the new southern beltway and the recently-widened stretch of I-35, traffic flowed pretty smoothly. I drove north to Humboldt, feeling almost nostalgic when I got stuck behind farm equipment. I had a "real" breakfast at Hardees in Humboldt, and then made got home around 10am.
There was one more little surprise in store when I went out to school to finish my duties there. One of our baseball coaches stopped in while I was working in my room and asked me if I'd like to throw out the first pitch for the team to start their season. I was honored, though more than a little bit worried. I'm pretty sure I've never pitched a baseball in my life, and I've always been pretty uncoordinated. I've been to a lot of baseball games in recent years, and I've seen any number of people embarrass themselves in first pitch ceremonies. While it was flattering to be asked, it was also a little scary. When game time came, I joked with the catcher saying I'd probably be ten feet wide or bean him or throw it over the backstop. Actually, I threw an amazingly straight shot. The ball landed in front of the plate, but no more so than a number of actual pitches during the game. The catcher was able to field it well, and afterwards the team presented me with a ball they had all signed. It was cool, and it more than made up for not seeing the games I'd hoped to see on this trip.
Now it's time to get on with summer, which basically means getting on with work. I'm teaching two different college courses this summer--which hopefully will pay of these trips and get me at least a little bit ahead. I might do another trip at the end of the summer, but I doubt it will be quite as much as these. I'm glad I did them, though. It was fun and relaxing and it made me get to know California much better than I ever had before.
The background music on this page is the '60s dance classic "Let's Twist Again", which the author likes a lot better than "Fun, Fun, Fun", but which sets the same mood described at Foster's Freeze.