A Mojave Desert Transit - 2011

 

A Mojave Desert Transit

The day started with four hours of packing for my 4-Corners trip. By 1:15 PM, I pulled away from Casa Carrie, with my Pioneer travel trailer in tow. As floodwater rose in the Atchafalaya Basin, I headed out of LA through the high desert, via the Pearblossom Highway. On the north slope of the San Gabriel Mountains, clouds of snow obscured several peaks. In late May, avalanche chutes were thick with fresh snow. It was 56 degrees on the highway, so 32 degrees at higher elevation was not a stretch.

 

On high desert cruise control, I was doing 60 mph on approach to Victorville. Deflecting the blur of Burger Kings and McDonalds from my eyes, I blew through town and headed north on Interstate I-15. My next stop was Love’s truck stop in Barstow, for fuel and a leftover chicken leg from last night’s dinner.

 

Taking Interstate I-40 East, towards Needles, CA, I picked up a tailwind, pushing me forward at 40 mph. Other Magellan GPS users might be familiar with the dreaded “Ludlow Dead Zone”. Perhaps it correlates with the big Ludlow earthquake in 2008. Since that time, I cannot transit in either direction between Ludlow and Needles without a major malfunction on my Magellan Crossover GPS. Not only does the screen freeze, but also a big red “X” appears over the usual green of the satellite indicator bars. Twenty minutes and twenty miles later, I resuscitated the device and got it working again. Am I the only Magellan GPS owner in the country who repeatedly hits the Ludlow Dead Zone? I do not want to attribute this strange phenomenon to paranormal activity, so I hope someone will step forward and comment on all of this.

 

Shortly after getting my GPS back on beam, I exited I-40 East at Essex Road, about 30 miles short of Needles. After another 20 miles on somewhat rough roads, I achieved my destiny, which was to arrive safely at Hole in the Wall Campground in the Mojave National Preserve. Thank you, Senator Diane Feinstein for championing the cause of 3.5 million acres of fragile and beautiful landscape. To stay here for but one night is to know both the wind and the beauty of our Desert Southwest.

 

According to my indoor/outdoor thermometer, after sunset the temperature here dropped one degree every ten minutes for the hour that I paid attention. In the low 60’s at sunset, it is 46 degrees now at 1:00 AM. The wind, which fell at dusk, plays now among the roof ornaments on my coach.

 

My only media tonight consisted of an AT&T 3G-voice connection and my Verizon 3G “MiFi 2200” wireless data card. No TV… thank goodness. When was the last time any of us spent 24-hours or more disconnected from all interactive media? My last foray off the grid was for two days, over two years ago, at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. In three days, I shall be in Chaco Canyon again, studying the ruins and reveling in my disconnectedness.

 

During my previous visits there, I wrote several articles about the place on my blog. Having recently learned the term, “pre-Puebloan” from the author, Craig Childs, I used it in my 2008 article about the Kin Klizhin ruin near Chaco Canyon. Less than three years later, if you Google “Kin Klizhin”, that article appears on page three of the web results. If you then click on “images”, my pictures of Kin Klizhin are interspersed throughout the first five pages. Alternatively, if you Google “pre-Puebloan”, my 2008 article on Kin Klizhin is second only to the Wikipedia article which defines the term. Switching to image-results, two of the first five pictures are my own.

 

I write about these search results not to feed my own ego, but to tell “dear reader” that he or she can stake a claim on their favorite word or phrase and then see the results of their labor (or passion) in almost no time. The secret is to write with originality, publish your own pictures and then… go back and do it all again (and again).

 

For the next several weeks, that is exactly what I plan to do – travel throughout the Four Corners and write about what I see, hear and feel. Please join me as I explore the last American frontier and the deserts of our mind.

Email James McGillis

 

By James McGillis at 01:28 AM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link