Every once in a while I start dreaming of Southern California. Not the place I grew up in (though given enough time and distance I feel a certain longing for that too), but the sun-bleached and unforgiving landscape painted by the likes of Chandler, Fante and Horace McCoy. The hot dry desert overrun with Joshua trees. Whitewashed stucco on Spanish-style bungalows. Orange groves and oil fields and faded billboards. Wide swaths of two lane pavement ending in the desert or the sea. Its a nice dream, sending small waves of goosebumps up my arms. Its also not an easily sustainable dream, as the tangle of L.A. freeways leave little to the imagination and favorites like the Cabazon dinosaurs and Bun Boy have all but disappeared behind strip malls and chain stores. But I guess that's a thesis unto itself, one much better left to Mike Davis or Kevin Starr. Still, there's something about Southern California that I can't shake, as if seeing still isn't believing. Just as one of those trees isn't actually a tree.
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Day 1
Left San Francisco on a Friday night and drove the long, vertical length of Central California til we reached Mohave at about 2 a.m. Found a cheap and suitably seedy motel and did what you do in cheap and seedy motels. Sleep.
Woke to the heat already rising and the wind whipping across the dry dirt.
Not much to see in town, but managed to find a thrift store and a fantastic Army-Navy surplus to rummage through. Old cars and machine parts and camping gear. Bought a badminton set and went to find the airplane graveyard.
Not hard to spot hundreds of planes in the middle of the desert.
Turns out the Mojave Air and Space Port isn't just a boneyard, but also a home to the National Test Pilot School and the Rotary Rocket.
Continued on into the Antelope Valley and passed a sign indicating we'd entered the township of Llano, California. Started telling Franklin how I'd read about the Utopian colony of Llano Del Rio years ago and how it only lasted a few years during the 1910's, when suddenly these stone structures passed by and a "Holy Fuck!" came flying out. Franklin generously pulled the car around and sure enough there stood the very same foundations and chimneys I'd just been describing. Its really an interesting story, especially considering for a few years it honestly seems to have worked in creating the socialist utopia it intended; communal kitchens, dances and dinners, baseball teams and thriving Montessori-style schools. Aldous Huxley even spent some time there, long after the colony fell apart, writing and contemplating Utopian downfalls of his own. Such an incredible thing to stumble across just by looking out the window.
Over the mountains again and into the quagmire of Riverside and its insanity of freeways and smog. Windows down in the air-condition-less heat and white knuckles all the way to the turn off for Palm Springs and our 3-day oasis, the Ace Hotel and Swim Club.
Cool, clean and all the post-modern amenities. A little on the spring-break side crowd-wise, but a patio all of our own rectified that rather quickly.
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Day 2
Ventured out to the much more adult Parker hotel the next day for what turned out to be a quintessential Hollywood brunch (I'd imagine). Two hours and a lot of greenbacks later and we emerged full of caviar benedict, lobster and mango salad and a whole lot of liquor. Sometimes you just have to go for it.
Walked the totally surreal grounds for a bit (I now know where the Colorado River's water is diverted to), then thrifted til the heat got the better of us. Spotted an incredible space-age looking house up on the hillside, with this great curving roof that dipped almost to the ground. Haunted my imagination for days and after a bit of digging, found out it was designed for Bob Hope by John Lautner, who once apprenticed with Frank Lloyd Wright before making a name on his own. It's also interesting to note that, though the Jesse and Evelyn were there the entire time, I have no pictures of them whatsoever.
Man, I love all that whitewash against the scrubby desert.
Continued our gluttony with a taco feast brought to our patio, which naturally degenerated into late night tortilla fights followed by a good night's beery sleep.
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Day 3
Spent the morning swimming and thrifting then said goodbye to Jesse and Evs and headed off to the Salton Sea. Didn't really know what to expect or where to go, but got a shortlist from Chris McCaw and figured we'd just go see what was out there.
Passed acres of date farms along the way.
First stop, the North Shore Yacht Club. By the looks of things, the club building has just finished undergoing total renovation, complete with bright black asphalt and fresh paint in the parking lot. Gone is the well-skated (and graffitti-d) pool and there's even a museum (which was closed) with exhibits about the building (designed by Architect Albert Frey) and the Sea in its heyday. At first glance it seems like a lovely place to hang out, maybe have a cocktail and watch water-skiers skate by. Around the corner, however, lay the remains of whatever used to surround the Yacht Club bulldozed into piles of broken concrete.
The illusion of a placid, swim-friendly lake also began to crumble the closer we got to its shore.
So many dead fish that the sand appeared to be coarsely ground bones and shells.
Moved south to Bombay Beach and drove onto the levy surround the "town". Once a thriving weekend getaway, the place was all but obliterated by flooding in the 1970's when two separate hurricanes caused the Sea to rise. A wall of dirt now keeps the Sea at bay, but the town's diminished to 1-square mile of trailers and dune buggies.
Beyond the levy abandoned trailers sit half-sunk in the hard-packed ground, brittling in the sun.
Sort of amazing that people have stuck it out there, weathering the heat in aluminum trailers and staring down the occasional gawkers. Its a tough folk that can handle desert living without recreational water nearby. We let them be and made our way out to Niland to catch Salvation Mountain in the waning light.
For whatever reason, I'd never really been interested in seeing the Mountain first hand, figuring it would look pretty much the same as the classic photo you always see. So glad I was wrong. Its amazing, with rooms and walkways and grotto-like caverns built in adobe and straw and slathered with paint. Read the story, like the place itself, it's pretty surreal.
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Day 4
Woke up Tuesday to find the hotel nearly deserted.
Took our last swims and said goodbye to Palm Springs.
Back through the long stretch of desert, avoiding the bigger highways and whipping about in the late afternoon wind.
Air conditioning circa 1966.
Stopped somewhere off Highway 99, looking for a river to dip in. Didn't find it, but the glass still came up half-full in true California style.
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America and the California Dream? As mentioned, there's a whole lot of Southern California that falls into a category I'd rather forget about. You can't close your eyes to it all, but taking the back roads definitely gives the scenery a certain timeless slant. Since baby Blue isn't fond of I-5 (nor necessarily am I) we took Highway 99 south instead, running through the once ranch-and-cattle towns of Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield. Deciding to bypass L.A. altogether, we took the 58 west to Mohave, then the 14 south through the weird tract-houses-in-nowhere that make up Lancaster and Palmdale. The 138 West took us past Llano (and a live elephant in someone's front yard) and on to the inevitable mad tangle of the 15-215-10 in San Bernadino. Those last two hours were by far the scariest part of the whole 11-hour drive. On the return trip we switched it up just a bit, maximizing our desert time by climbing the Cajon Pass and running up the 395 for a while. Its a long, hot drive, but there's always Astro Burger and fruit stands and looking out for trees that aren't really trees.