Timing is imperative and this year we squeaked through with only hours to spare. The good weather, sunny and clear in Vancouver continued all the way down through Washington and Oregon. Just past Mount Shasta and Weed, it started to snow; well, it was sleet, mixed rain and snow and as we progressed the snow banks grew larger and larger and the snow was pristine - obviously fresh, not yet soiled by the passing traffic. In the opposite lanes, road crews were trying to extricate a jack-knifed semi-trailer while we had to carefully maneuver past snow ploughs trying to widen the ever narrowing roadway. But the salted & sanded road surface was clear and safe; thank goodness. That night it apparently snowed another foot and so we made it through just in time. We were tucked snug in our bed at the Rolling Hills Casino in Corning, the olive capital of California where it rained so torrentially the surrounding fields turned to lakes. If that was snow, it would easily have been a foot of it. Geometrically aligned rows of blossoming trees protruded ludicrously from streams of muddy water. The torrents continued the next day all the way down to about Stockton, just south of Sacramento. The sky was so heavy and grey with clouds it felt like doomsday. Our wipers struggled to keep up to the continuous downpour as wind gusts buffetted poor old Maggie and Fernie held on to the steering wheel with sheer determination not to let her stray into the adjacent lane where semi-trailers roared obliviously on by. Hey! Surely this isn't California. Ironically, in Vancouver the weather was glorious. Maybe we're going the wrong way.
A couple of years ago, after hiking up and down the steep
hills in the tiny mining town of Benson, Arizona, we stopped for a rest & sustenance in a little coffee bar. While reading our newspaper, we heard a voice from the table beside us asking 'can you see what the weather is like in Albuqerque?'. We were also on our way to New Mexico and that was the beginning of a continuing friendship. L&A live in southern Oregon and this year were just returning from the Santa Cruz area which made us cross paths at Santa Nella. We pulled into the proposed RV Park fairly early to see L&A had already arrived and we spent the rest of the day together. It was still drizzling, so the wine was opened early. Fernie chose the restaurant for dinner that night.....Pea Soup Anderson's, not that there was much choice. He's a pea soup gourmand so he was delighted. Now wouldn't you think that being a 'pea soup' restaurant, they'd have a cup of soup included with the dinners? No way; that's an additional $3.95 and Fernie was the only taker. I wish I'd just gone for the soup and french bread because what I chose was not not very good and the other three agreed. The only thing worthwhile is the pea soup...and even that is nowhere near as good as what our daughter makes. We introduced L&A to geocaching a while ago and they took to it with as much enthusiasm as we have. So, next morning before packing up and going our separate ways, we decided to go for just one cache and wouldn't you know it, it was at Pea Soup Anderson's and to top it off it was gone. They had tidied the gardens and the cache had disappeared. There was no time to go for another as the cranky girl in the RV office, when asked if we could stay a bit later than checkout time, grudgingly permitted an extra hour only and that was quickly running out. Oh, I forgot to mention – we woke to California weather - glorious sunshine! With hopes that we might once again cross paths with L&A in Montana in June, we parted ways.
Desert Rats
Bakersfield with its welcoming Walmart is a great stocking up stop and we needed to replenish our cupboards for our upcoming week in the desert. So we spent a night there before heading up through the picturesque Tehachapi Pass to Barstow, Baker and north to the environs of Tecopa bordering the south east side of Death Valley National Park. Down to tshirts now, we were thrilled to be back to the desert. Tecopa is a teeny hamlet with the hot springs its only claim to fame. A handful of less than idyllic RV parks lined the road. They packed them in so tightly, you'd say 'gesundheit' if your neighbour sneezed,. Some of them had their own 'baths' but there was a public hot springs too. I'm not too big on hot springs....find them a bit boring after about ten minutes but I was willing to take a look. Hmmmm......sexually segregated – now what's that all about? Oh, that's right – my friend P had warned me no clothes allowed. Ooooh, that sounds creepy to me to be sitting around in a pool with a bunch of other aged, flabby and nudie old 'gals'. The only thing worse would be sitting around with a bunch of wrinkly old men. But I took a look anywayz and found the pools were tiny – about 10' x 10' – one hot and one cool. So, not only would I have to bear my butt and sit around with naked ol' gals, but we'd we packed in like sardines. NOPE! Not for me. Anyway, the price, $7 for a day pass, would be wasted on me when I'd stay in for maybe ten minutes. I'd rather go geocaching. Fernie on the other hand loves hot springs and says because he's blind without his glasses his senses aren't disturbed by the sights around him. I just hope that those old geezers aren't incontinent. They also have a private sexually integrated hot springs pool for four at $25 an hour. Oh that would be just delightful, wouldn't it! I just can't imagine being in there with friends – I'd never be able to look them in the eye again (pun intended). Too kinky for me.
For all those thinking 'gosh she's cheap', I just want you to know that I freely admit to being extremely frugal – perhaps that's how we afford the lifestyle that we have.
Those RV parks are not for us when wild open desert beckons and Tecopa has some of the most beautiful and quiet and free BLM lands (public lands where they allow disbersed camping). We pulled into the same spot as last year and only one trailer could be seen about a half mile away. Barren and craggy but colourful mountains surrounded us and the quiet was a bit disconcerting at first. I could actually hear the inside of my head...a sort of gentle buzzing that I didn't realize existed. This was heaven! Lounge chairs were out and happy hour could begin. Temperatures in the desert are widely disparate. 20 to 25 degrees C (70 to 80F) in the middle of the day can go down to almost freezing overnight. So once the sun went down behind the mountains, 5:15pm while we were there, the rest of the evening was spent inside just as if we were at home. But with satellite TV, a pile of good books, both with our laptops and our sleepy yet playful old dog, we settled in happily each night.
Each day, we selected a different area to explore and of course, geocache. One day around Shoshone, another just in the environs of Tecopa, down to the Dumont Dunes, up towards Badwater, north to Death Valley Junction for the Amargosa Hotel and Opera House and Stateline.
We'd start each morning with chores; Fernie more than me (I think that 'me' should be 'I' – Obama's in trouble for that grammatical glitch). Fernie loves nothing better than cleaning and waxing his Maggie. I, strangely, can't relate to loving anything that in anyway could be construed as work.
Shoshone – now, that's a name from the old cowboy movies. The town, if
you can call it that, is a lush oasis in the arid surroundings of the Mojave Desert. Huge leafy green trees shade a gas station, store, coffee bar, museum, post office, motel & RV Park – I think that's about it; after all, the population is only 100. Just behind the present day town lies Dublin Gulch where rows of dwellings are carved deeply into the clay embankments; they reminded us of the cliff dwellings in New Mexico and Colorado. Perhaps they were originally home to the Shoshone Indians (or should I say 'Native Americans'). But in the 1920's they were inhabited by some old time desert rats who arrived here to work in the silver mines. Piles of rusty tin cans lay spread out like a memorial. I guess they didn't get much fresh food. 
Most of the dwellings have doors now labelled 'private' but peering in through the slats, I could see rusty old bedsprings and not much else; one of them has bars – must have been a jail cell.
They were probably the coolest style of accomodation in the summer months but how dark and depressing they must have been.
A corrugated outhouse served the entire village two at a time – one commode with toilet seat and one without.
There was not much information to be found and when I asked the vacuous girl at the store, she said 'Oh, I think I heard something about them but I'm not sure what it was'. But a tiny & quaint museum across the road offered all the info I needed.
A couple of geocaches took us out of Tecopa, through a narrow sand & limestone canyon with monoliths carved by natural forces to an unexpected oasis of date palms, willows, towering cottonwood and cacti, called China Ranch Date Farm.
A Chinese man named Ah Foo originally owned the property and farmed it back in the early part of the 20th century. Strangely, he went missing and somehow it ended up in the hands of some white men.....Hmmmmmmm! Springs are plentiful in this valley and at China Ranch, water just keeps pumping out into the Amargosa River down a long winding valley filled with bullrushes, mesquite and the resulting birds & wildlife. Gypsum was once mined in the hills in the early part of the 20th century until several tragedies shut them down – an out of control train as well as disasters in the shafts. The mines are still obvious but dangerous and the tunnels are mostly closed off with chain link fences. Only fools would venture into the dank & fearful innards of the crumbling mountains. We came away with a couple of caches, a hot loaf of date bread, a bag of fresh dates and tired feet from our hike through the lush valley.
The desert always attracted strange and eccentric folks but one of the most unusual stories is that of Marta Becket, the Death Valley Diva. In 1967, she peered into the old theater now called the Amargosa Opera House, which was built in 1923 by the Pacific Coast Borax Company at the crossroads called Death Valley Junction and just knew that she was meant to perform there.
It was originally called Corkill Hall and was the social
center for the area until 1945 when it was abandoned. She purchased the property and then spent years of painstaking work painting an entire audience on the walls filled with characters who might have attended an opera in 16th century Spain. The murals took four years to compete. It took her another couple of years to paint the ceiling with a blue sky filled with cherubs, the four winds and a central dome with 15 ladies playing antique instruments. It was now ready for Marta to perform her ballet and pantomime and that's what she's been doing since the 1970's. One performance a week on Saturday nights and a couple of extra in the spring months still keeps the aging Marta limber. 
This is an extremely remote location and tumbleweeds roll across the front of the ghostly hotel and opera house.
There's a mural in the lobby of the hotel, which is still open for business, that depicts what the buildings will look like when nature and the desert reclaim the property but an opaque fairy-like creature in the upper right corner overlooks the scene – it's the spirit of Marta, of course.
Marta Becket calls her business 'A Non-profit Corporation' but I beg to differ; she charges $15 per person to see her show which might be cancelled at short notice if she's not feeling well (she has a bad back) and the open area across the road where RVers used to dry camp at no charge now has a sign that it's $15 a night but can include sewer dumping services.
Weekend warriors in their Dodge Ram diesel trucks tow behind them huge 5th wheel trailers that hold their off-road vehicles alongside their living space and these youngish to middle-aged testosterone filled studly types converge on the BLM recreation areas set aside for their roaring dune buggies. The Dumont Dunes is one of those spots. The areas of flat sand are set aside for racing and the dunes are covered with a grapevine of interweaving trails. On weekends, the noise is obscene so it's an area that we'd avoid staying around. Not that it doesn't sound like fun but in my mind I envision us all alone running around the desert dunes not with all those other thousands of ATV's. So we went down there on a Tuesday to do some geocaching. It was so hot on the white sand – must have been in the mid 80's – that we couldn't walk too far. There were pockets here and there of RV's camped but there weren't too many dune buggies around. We had to be careful with the geocaches, as you never knew when you were removing rocks what might lie underneath. A couple of lizards gave us a scare and one creative cache had a plastic tarantula attached....yeah, that was funny! So our walking sticks were used to prod and explore.
Our last day in our Garden of Eden. We had almost exhausted the geocaches in the area and the clang and clamour of Las Vegas was beckoning. While I found a wifi hotspot and caught up with email, logging geocaches, Facebook news, banking and this darn blog, Fernie ventured down to the Tecopa Hot Springs pool. I'll let him tell you all about it:
"After washing and waxing Maggie by hand for approximately fifteen hours and this being the sixth day in the Tecopa desert, it was time to relax in a hot springs pool.
The Tecopa Hot Springs Pools are divided into men's and women's bathouses. The hot pool has an average temperature of 104 degrees Fahrenheit. The international spa community has the unofficial opinion that Tecopa Hot Springs has a natural water rating second to Baden-Baden near the French and German borders. Upon entering, signs advise you that no clothes are allowed in the hot pools and everyone has to have a shower before entering the pools.When I entered the shower area, I could hear some type of chant coming from the hot pool, a young man came out to advise me that his grandfather (a Shoshone chief) comes to this pool often and always goes into a native Shoshone chant. After having a very lengthy shower I entered the hot pool and thought that this was like sliding into very expensive silk pyjamas. I still keep feeling my hands as it made my skin as smooth as silk; what a beautiful feeling.
After about fifteen minutes, four Japanese gentlemen came into the adjoining room, and the young man went directly to them to advise them of his grandfather's chanting. It was quite humorous, since it was obvious that the Japanese men did not understand a word of English and only bowed to the young man. At this time ,the grandfather decided it was time to leave and his grandson assisted him in leaving the pool. The grandfather was very elderly and looked like he was about ninety years old.
I looked at the clock and it was already two o'clock, time goes fast when you're having fun. I had been in the pool for over thirty minutes and felt to relaxed that I could probably have an hour nap when I got home but I promised Gerri, that I would write something about the pools for the blog.
I must admit it was worth the $7.00 for the few hours and it was my reward for beautifying Maggie."
