Desert Wonders

January 4-6, 2022

We spent most of Tuesday, the fourth, getting ready to head west.

It’s amazing how much junk only two people can accumulate over just a few days.

The handout breakfast at a hotel is usually a fallback for us. We usually bring our own yogurt, bran cereal, and almond milk. 

I know: almond milk sounds weird, but we both like it. Besides, it keeps better than cow’s milk.

The less you have to move, the better off you are, So anything we didn’t need to use that day went into the car.

We also did laundry. I ironed another shirt and felt very accomplished.

I came across some rave reviews for a pizzeria called Pomo, on First Street, a short way from the hotel.

They weren’t exaggerating.

I had a pizza named for the house. The Pomo pizza came with sausage, mushrooms, salami, and olives. I had to eat it with a knife and fork. Fantastic.

It’s hard to believe, but there are some people who just don’t care for pizza. Joanna’s one of them. She had a bolognese over spaghetti. 

Wednesday we knew we were in for a treat. When they learned that we planned to take Interstate 10 to California, Richard and Linda told us about a stop near the Arizona state line.

It’s a town called Quartzsite. Just a dot on the map, but wow, what a place.

It’s almost in California, at exit 17. We crested a hill and saw a town of low-roofed houses spreading in the valley in the distance. 

When we got closer, it became evident that these weren’t houses at all, at least not in the conventional sense.

Everywhere, on both sides of the highway, was a sea of trailers, recreational vehicles, and campers.

This is where the nomads come to winter. And there must be thousands of them.

Most of the buildings in town, at least from what we saw, have a temporary feel, too. They are largely prefab manufactured structures, the kind of thing where you might keep your tractor and your combine.

There seems to be an overwhelming demand for rocks, jewelry, and crystals. That’s what most of the stores on Main Street were hawking. 

There were also a number of transient vendors set up in tents and lean-tos. They were selling much the same merchandise.

We stopped at a place called Daniel’s. We had seen billboards on I-10 advertising its “fresh beef jerky.” I don’t know how anything dried and salted could be fresh. But we stopped there.

Joanna bought some the beef. I took some elk. I had some once before, and I may have liked it.

I didn’t see any camel jerky, but it would have been appropriate, because camels are celebrated all over town. There are almost life-size statues of camels, little camels by the sign that welcomes you to town, and there is a camel crowning the town’s most important monument.

Besides the stunning array of mobile shelters, the town has a historic cemetery, anchored by a monument known as Hi Jolly’s tomb. 

Hi Jolly was as close as the American soldiers could get to pronouncing the man’s name, Hadji Ali. He was a Syrian camel driver, who came to the area when the Army set up the U.S. Camel Corps.

That was the brainstorm of no less a figure than Jefferson Davis. Davis was Secretary of War and decided to experiment with camels in the Sonoran Desert.

The Civil War gave Davis a new job, as president of the Confederacy. Leading the Rebels and the U.S. War Department is a clear conflict of interest, so he had to quit his U.S. job.

With the departure of Davis, the Camel Corps fell apart. 

Jolly stayed in the area, and was such a popular fellow, that when he died in 1902 the locals built a pyramid over his grave to celebrate his Middle Eastern heritage. 

The entire cemetery seems exotic. At least, they seem so to this East Coast Anglo. Graves are outlined with frames, often made of stones, for instance, creating a very foreign look. Many of the markers are missing, so the graves have small identifiers giving the plot number and the person’s name.

 

We stopped for the night at a Quality Inn in Blythe, California. We had stopped at a Quality Inn several weeks ago, and found it exceptional, The one in Blythe was a step down for the franchise. I couldn’t even log into e-mail.

We had a quick dinner at a diner called Steaks and Cakes. It was a top-rated spot in town. We won’t go there again.

We left Blythe for Riverside the next morning.

On the way, Interstate 10 passes Joshua Tree National Park.We had to drive more than 30 miles up the park road to see any Joshua trees.

The park is placed to preserve a meeting of two ecosystems.

The south end, where we started, is in the Colorado Desert, which is part of the Great Sonoran Desert. It’s a low-altitude environment, which out here means hot and arid, where the Joshua trees can’t survive.

The north end of the park is in the Mojave Desert, where the weather’s cooler. It is at least 4,000 feet higher than the Colorado. It’s still arid by East Coast standards, but there is generally more moisture than at the low altitudes.

There are quite a few spectacles in the park—mountains that look like heaps of huge gravel and hills made of megaliths.

One of the strangest sights is the Cholla Garden. Maybe they take over when they root. I don’t know.

In any event, the cholla cacti seem to practice social distancing, staying several feet away from each other. And almost nothing grows between them. A weeded garden indeed.

We drove up to the Mojave and got out to walk among the Joshua trees.

A legend says the Joshua, a variety of yucca, got its name from the Mormons, who saw its arms pointing the way, like Joshua leading the Israelites.

On the way north in the park, the road climbs, but I wasn’t aware of how much. On the way back to I-10, a run of more than 30 miles, we coasted for most of the trip.

We came to Riverside sometime around four.

We searched for likely places to eat that were nearby, preferably in walking distance, You can do that in this neighborhood.

The best prospect was the Big Skyy Bistro. The sign outside has one “y”, but the menu and the web site have two,

There are lots of Chinese eateries around here, but this was the only one that wasn’t fast food. 

My chicken chow mein with black bean sauce was terrific. It went down well with a couple of glasses of an OK Chardonnay.

Joanna had roast duck. I had a bite of that and it, too, was very good.

Duck is a telling sign, by the way, for Chinese and French restaurants. If there’s duck on the menu, the place could be good.  No guarantee of that, mind. But the food is less likely to be good if there’s no duck at all.

We’re going to rest a while in Riverside. I haven’t found too much to do here. Maybe we’ll be able to get our booster shots. It’s also a good place to take naps.

Sleep well, all, and keep well.

Love

Harry and Joanna