Under a Big Sky

This is almost the final instalment in the Great Tour of America and Italy from last year - I just thought I'd capitalise that to make it look Big and Important - a trick learned from A.A. Milne. I'm going to need to go on another trip to get some more adventures about which to blog. In the meantime...

Lone Pine apparently used to have an iconic pine tree which has since blown down, so the town should really be renamed No Pine.

We have missed their 19th film festival by a day. This festival celebrates Westerns and famous actors such as Gary Cooper, Hop-along Cassidy, Kirk Douglas and the bloke who played the Lone Ranger. The surrounding mountains have been used as scenery for many a film.

John Wayne stayed in the very same hotel as we do. Our room is old-fashioned with a Wild West feel – there are stencilled images printed on the wooden furniture, a green and purple flowery carpet, and a friendly receptionist.

Dinner at the Merry-Go-Round restaurant is delicious. In keeping with the area, I have pea soup and then filet steak with beans and twice-baked potato. We share a bottle of Pepper Grove cabernet sauvignon which is a Californian wine imported from Napa. The restaurant is in a building like a tent or an octagonal big top and the food is excellent. I enjoy the atmosphere and it is the perfect end to a great day.

The next morning we wake up to the most amazing scenery. Wow, what a view! We’re flanked by real cowboy mountains; jagged peaks haunted with boulders and topped with snow. Him Outdoors discovers the trail up Mt Whitney is one that can be walked in a couple of days and he is itching to get up there.

Unfortunately we haven’t got a couple of days so we quickly explore the town (which sells crystals, rocks, wood carvings, pottery, moccasins, cowboy boots, belts, fringed jackets, cowboy hats and crockery) and have breakfast at a diner where the owner collects butter churns. Her admission of this fact leads to an unsolicited conversation with a punter who collects random antiques from radios to roller-skates.

We drive on again through towns such as Big Pine and Independence, the administrative centre of Inyo County complete with a courthouse and, according to its brochure, ‘a patriotic flag-waving Fourth of July celebration, featuring an early-morning flag-raising, pancake breakfast, a 4km/10km run/walk, a nice small-town parade, delicious home-made ice cream and pie social, kids’ activities (including a frog jumping contest), an arts and crafts show, deep-pit barbecue and, to complete an exciting day, a sunset fireworks show.’

Bishop is less dramatic. As well as the usual Denny’s, Burger King, MacDonald’s, Taco Bell, KFC and Karl Jnr, the town boasts such gems as Spellbinder Books and Coffee, Brock’s Flyfishing Specialists, Anne Marie’s Wedding Register, El Dorado Saving’s Bank, Giggle Springs Gasoline Market, Jumpin Juice and Java, Erick Schatt’s Bakery, and The Meat House.

This is an outdoor paradise with its clean air and bright light. We are in the High Sierras where people come to fish, hunt, shoot, trek, cycle, hike, and generally revel in the bluest skies I’ve seen outside Queenstown. We approach Sherwin Summit (7,000ft) where the steep sides of the archetypal American mountains are clad with pine trees and a sprinkling of snow.

Road signs promise twisting roads and bounding deer for the next umpteen miles. There are signs to Tom’s Place and an exhortation to report drunk drivers to the police. The landscape of boulders and trees is dotted with wilderness lodges, and paths wind through the scenery, beckoning runners to follow. Him Outdoors says, ‘This is my sort of stuff. I like this.’

Death Valley 2

We stop for lunch at Furnace Creek where the gift shop sells pawn jewellery (genuine Native American turquoise and silverwork that they have pawned to spend up large at the casino probably), kids’ books about spiders, snakes and lizards, and cute cuddly tarantulas.

I have a mesquite salad (smoked chicken, toasted pecans, salad greens, red onion and mandarin slices with lime and cilantro dressing) while Him Outdoors chooses a taco salad. This collection of beans, chicken, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, olives, guacamole and sour cream in a big taco shell is a sort of Mexican equivalent of a giant Yorkshire pudding.

The wind has died down but the sun is still relentless as we press on for a stroll along the boardwalk at salt creek, looking for pupfish (so called because they ‘play like puppies’). These amazing creatures have adapted to changing climactic conditions and can live in springs as warm as 30°C and in streams whose water can be five times as salty as the ocean. There aren’t any fish and we can’t see any water, but there must be some moisture as there is plenty of pickleweed, introducing rare greenery to the park.

Mosaic Canyon has beautiful marble-like slides on one side and rocks popping out of rubble like polished concrete on the other. The late afternoon sun casts shadows and patterns on the sand dunes. The temperature plummets as the sun dips behind the hills, and the reds, pinks, yellows and golds give way to browns, greys, purples and blues. The full moon appears ghostly in the sky above the Cottonwood Mountains; the coyotes will have something to howl at tonight.

We leave Death Valley behind. It got its name in 1849 when the California Gold Rush lured short-cut-seeking wagon parties through here. Only one wagon made it out, and one of their party died in the valley. Another member of the party turned and said, ‘Goodbye Death Valley’ and the name stuck.

The muted pinks of Panamint Valley are cool and gentle in the twilight. The moon rises high and the stars begin to come out; there are still no clouds to block the sky. It is pierced only by the silhouettes of the Joshua trees on the horizon, like Injuns creeping over the crest of the hill.

If the creationists are right, then Death Valley must be either a mistake or a hoax. It is as though the maker was going through an experimental phase and here is his waste basket into which he threw everything that didn’t quite work.

Perhaps this was the ‘difficult second’ for which he grew his hair, took some mind expanding drugs and produced a concept album in a gatefold sleeve, which he called Death Valley. And he saw that it was distinctly odd.

Road trip: Oakhurst - Beatty

At one extreme we have the Cuba Street Carnival on my week in images blog, and over here we have a continuation of the America travel diary. And we are heading to Death Valley...

Him Outdoors is very impressed with the American supermarket – an aisle of cereals including several types of Cheerios; individually wrapped slices of cheese; ginseng and honey in a can; self-service checkouts for clearly honest people.

We drive through infinite swathes of nothingness, questioning of flat, shimmering patches, “Is that the sea?” No, it’s Central Valley California; the fruit and nut (oh yes) producer of California. The faded and dusty American flags hang limply from pick-up truck shops – a total contrast to the bright snapping variety with their jaunty stars and forge-ahead stripes in the waterfront cities.

Boats are for sale by the driving range in Pinedale, but where’s the water, or do people sail away on a mirage of dreams? Apparently Paul Evans sells fun – if your idea of fun is a mobile home, then maybe he does.

We pass a procession of fire trucks and a cardboard city on the edge of Fresno. How can this be when the farmers’ fields are full of corn, cattle, beets and potatoes – there is food for Africa! The suburban giants are advertising hoardings sprouting up along the motorway, signalling Shell, Taco Bell, MacDonald’s, Jack in the Box, Denny’s. One sign reads, ‘People and pets, cremation urns and keepsakes’. There’s a market for everything in America – if you think of it; you can sell it.

There are stop signs at crossroads to nowhere. Delano is characterized by tattooed men in Stetsons driving pick-up trucks with tinted windows. We lock our doors and drive on through. As we approach the brown hills and distant mountains it looks like Graham Sydney country. A large black crow flaps and a wily coyote lopes away from the road kill at the dusty verge.

Many churches present
opportunities to worship along the way – there are Seven Day Adventists; Latter Day Saints; Baptists; Lighthouse Pentecostal, but none of your traditional everyday Catholics, Anglicans and Presbyterians. A forlorn sign pitched in a field of dirt reads, ‘Prayer changes things’ and a white painted cross on a brown barren hillside presides over the wasteland.

China Lake is a strange place – a naval weapons centre in the middle of the desert. There are acres of nuclear testing sites in nearby Nevada. These are represented by featureless purple blocks of shading on the map, and surrounded by a barbed wire perimeter fence in reality with a warning to keep out posted every twenty yards in case you don’t get the message.

Only two shops are in evidence – one sells ‘outdoor additions’ which appear to be gazebos, conservatories, barns and anything else that can conceivably fill the space. The other shop is the Gem and Mineral Society – a gathering of cars suggests the consumption of tacos, hot dogs and car washes offered for sale. Angus is boarded up and derelict; everything is demolished or for sale – this looks like real Mad Max stuff. Dry lakes, salt mines, deserted towns and a naval weapons centre – this really is an odd part of the country.

As the day is getting on, we drive right through Death Valley National Park. A mid-west couple (from New Mexico) tell us at the visitor centre of a ‘groovy little town’ called Beatty in Nevada, on the other side of the park, so we head there. If this is a groovy little town by their standards, I dread to think where they live. The motel we stay at has an industrial shower curtain, strange connecting doors, and a polyester bedspread in blue, orange, pink and yellow, with images of bears, flamingos, Canada geese, shells, skyscrapers, forest scenes and mountains. Still, it’s a room.

We go out to the Sourdough Saloon which we instantly rename the sour faced saloon on account of the extremely unfriendly waitress. The bar is in a horseshoe shape with high stools – there is nowhere else to sit but at the middle of this sea of Stetsons, baseball caps and cigarette smoke. Worrying that we might be sitting in a local’s seat, we order Michelob Amber Bock (the only thing we recognise other than Bud from the list the landlady barks at us). No one else drinks tap beer – it’s all bottles, spirits and Jaeger bombs. A man buys a bottle of vodka, which he wraps in a brown paper bag before leaving.

A turn-off in Beatty leads to Las Vegas, and that’s where many people are expected to go. The ceiling is papered with dollar bills from passers by. One woman swears loudly at her relatives across the bar. Another tells us she moved here two years ago from ‘the high desert in California’. She loves it here and sits out on the porch in the mornings with her coffee watching ‘the beautiful light’. She is not even deterred by the 70 mile drive once a week to Parumph to buy groceries.

The road to our hotel is lined with ammunition cases on sale – I’ve never seen such a collection and am even more disturbed by the potential market. There is a casino next to our motel and the lights flash on and off all night. It’s quite a draw card as there are no legal casinos in California (apart from on Indian land).

I watch True Blood on HBO, a series Our Gracious Hostess has recommended. It is slightly alarming that the images of vampires infiltrating society do not seem out of place in Beatty, Nevada.