June 21, 2017
Summer solstice - the longest day of the year - and we have to do it in the smack middle of the Mojave Desert! Just goes to show that we may have been hiding behind the door when God passed out brains.
In our defense, the location was chosen less as a destination and more as the halfway point to our primary goal: Bodie. In the spirit of making the best of it, we found plenty to keep us busy, nay, even to enjoy.
Back home, the first two couples who heard that we were landing in Barstow enthusiastically advised us to dine at the Firehouse Restaurant, and so we did, with great gusto and appreciation for the recommendation. Easily the best marinara sauce I have ever eaten: our so-called Firehouse tour consisted of a scrumptious large salad, homemade garlic bread perfectly toasted to melt in your mouth, lasagna, parmigiana chicken and pasta Alfredo. A delightful treat!
Casa del Desierto, Railroads, Route 66 . . .
Barstow is a major railroad hub, which induced Fred Harvey to construct one of his famed Harvey Houses here. Casa del Desierto (Desert House) is a mammoth edifice, artfully designed and elegant. I had to laugh at myself; my sight has deteriorated to the point that when I read about the place, I thought it said only the two bathrooms were open for the public to tour, when in reality, there are two ballrooms available for viewing. Truthfully, I did think it was a little odd . . .
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| The interior is being restored to its original elegance. |
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| The light fixtures are reproductions of the originals, gracefully designed and beautifully crafted. |
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| Within the Harvey House complex is a railroad museum with a variety of vintage rail cars, but unfortunately open only on weekends. |
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| I risked life & limb to get this shot of the tracks with Casa del Desierto in the background. . . well, anyway I walked a good bit out on the bridge in the bad part of town in the noonday heat, which is almost as dramatic, I think. |
My friend Linn, who hails from these parts, said her grandfather was killed in an accident in this railroad yard. As compensation, the railroad magnanimously gave her grandmother five bags of groceries!
Afton Canyon . . .
Heat wave notwithstanding, we were in the region and thus must explore. A place called Afton Canyon seemed just the ticket for a look-see. The Mojave River, a seasonal stream that at times becomes a torrent, flows through Afton Canyon.
A vast prehistoric lake once lay in the valley below where Barstow now sits and overflowed during the Ice Age to cut through the rock terrain below: so explains the señor, and I think I got that mostly right.
At any rate, there was no ice in sight when we visited Afton Canyon and there was precious little water either, just enough open places in and amongst the cattail reeds to support a healthy and vocal bullfrog population.
It was surprising really to find that much moisture and the incumbent marshy area; every other place we saw the Mojave River, it appeared not to have flowed for a very long time.
A BLM sign informed us that Pyramid Canyon lay just beyond a railroad bridge over the river.
We found a way through the brush and reeds and rock-hopped across the water, keeping a close eye out for rattlesnakes, and were amazed when we surprised a herd of seven bighorn sheep not far off above the river bank. One handsome specimen was wearing a large radio collar.
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| They spent some time looking at us looking at them. |
As we walked beyond the wetlands, we discovered an intriguing dry wash flanked by drapery-like cliffs. Because of the extreme temperatures, we turned back from our hike earlier than I would have liked and later than was probably circumspect.
Calico, Knott's Berry Farm. . .
The Calico Mountains rise up from the valley, called locally Silver Valley for the riches discovered in the convolutions of the surrounding range. More that 500 silver mines were established there, and with them came the men to extract the ore and many others to make their way supporting the efforts via supplies and other necessities.
Thus was born Calico in 1881 - like so many other boom-and-bust towns, it burned and was rebuilt. After its heyday, many of the buildings, adobe and wood alike, deteriorated and collapsed or melted back into the ground whence they came.
Entering the scene some years later was Walter Knott, of Knott's Berry Farm fame, who set about restoring the place to its previous stature. The Knott family deeded Calico to the San Bernardino County, which now operates it as a tourist attraction.
Because of the season and the extreme heat, we thought we might be the only folks goofy enough to take in the sights, but were we ever mistaken! The place was teeming with sightseers, although we noticed nary an American in the bunch.
Evidently, tour companies for foreigners find Calico to be a big draw, not to mention lots of tourists had driven themselves there in their rental cars. We took pictures for a couple from Barcelona, Spain, and another for a woman who was possibly Italian, but who neither spoke nor understood a word of English.
John and Lucy Lane were two of Calico's many residents. After John's death, Lucy remained a part-time resident into the 1960s.
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| I seriously doubt the State of California, or pretty much anyone else for that matter, would approve of the bare copper wiring in Lucy's house, nor would most of us be satisfied with the paltry lighting. |
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| The Lane's general store is one of the original buildings in Calico. |
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| You never know where those Kellys will show up. |
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| Overlooking Calico toward Silver Valley. |
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| This stunning display in the rock shop is a collage of minerals built, sold and installed by the San Jose Rock Club for a whopping $38. |
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| The Zenda Mining Company's headquarters is another of the original buildings, as is the assay office in the following photo. |
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| The remnants of China Town in Calico. |
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| Lil's Saloon sports a beautiful bar and an amazing collection of portraits of various and sundry gunslingers and gang members from days of yore. They were painted in the 1950s by Leo McCarty - awesome! |
The Maggie Mine is one of the attractions within Calico; we explored its tunnels and drifts and marveled at the seven-foot-high passages carved from solid rock. It was awfully dim in there but that might have had something to do with my leaving my untinted glasses in the truck.
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| No really, that is a mammoth mountain of solid rock that has been twisted into impossible striations. |
My pard informed me all about the controversial Calico Early Man site in those self-same mountains. It's all beyond me, but it goes something like this: archaeologists discovered a place with geofacts (naturally occurring items that have the appearance of man-made stone artifacts).
Enter Louis Leakey of the renowned Leakey anthropologist family who declares the find to be of human origin and far and away the most ancient of any yet found in North America. Leakey's declaration was disputed by geologists who determined the articles could indeed be of natural origin. Coupling that with the complete dearth of other evidence of prehistoric human habitation and Leakey's amazing early man fades away into obscurity. Indeed, the site has now been permanently closed by the Bureau of Land Management, which is too bad because I would like to have visited there.
Rainbow Basin . . .
To round out our very warm day, we opted for the Rainbow Basin Natural Area because it was touted as a driving tour. Of course I had to hop out of the truck numerous times for photographs and once we did a walk up to an overlook that gave us a stupendous view of a syncline, an instance where the Earth's crust folds downward and we were standing right in the middle of the fold.
The place was a geologic marvel with a one-lane dirt road winding through and around incredible formations of rock and sand that caused us to exclaim at every turn.
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| When we visited Joshua Tree National Monument, there was not a "tree" to be seen. Heading toward Rainbow Basin, though, we found lots of 'em, including this giant. |
We didn't really do any birding per se, but did manage to identify a few to start the trip list. They included raven, phainopepla, house sparrow, rock dove, house finch, rock wren, turkey vulture, mourning dove, red-tailed hawk and Brewer's blackbird. We were far too fatigued from heat to bother putting out feeders that might have attracted some to the trailer.
Barstow celebrates . . .
In honor of the 90th birthday of Route 66 last year, Barstow incorporated a mural project into its downtown revitalization. We thoroughly enjoyed the numerous well-done and informative paintings through the five miles of downtown. Most of the murals had a historic theme and included a painted sidebar explaining an aspect of the area's history or culture. Not all were easy to access, but with a good bit of circling blocks to find a place to park and some foot work, we managed to photograph a smattering of them.
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| This mural was weather damaged, but I liked its theme. |
Desert Springs . . .
On our foray through the Mojave Desert, our first two nights out this trip were at the wide-spot-in-the road called Daggett, a short way out of Barstow. Pleasant folks and a nice enough place primarily peopled with permanents rather than transients like us.
Its claim to fame is a nice little fishing lake; appropriately enough, there is also a swimming pool. We did learn during our stay that the trailer a/c cannot compete with temps like we had there - 111-114 - miserable until far into the evening, so it was just as well that we were occupied elsewhere for the bulk of our time. What they hey: if you're going to be sweltering, you might as well be doing something instead of just sitting around complaining.
And so we dance in the rain . . . or the heat . . .
