The Trip – Part 10: Off to California
Leaving Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, we made a brief stop in Ajo, Arizona. Our campground neighbor Paul Kay said if we were headed that way we might want to see the huge open-pit copper mine there. I don’t remember anything other than that it was indeed huge. Then we headed west again. On the road to California. Our first night we only made it as far as Yuma and, with daylight fading fast in late December, we ended up in a BLM campground near the Colorado River. It was quite barren and you could either camp on rocks or you could camp on gravel. We chose the latter and were glad to get out of there the next morning.
Still driving along very close to the Mexican border we parked our car in Calexico, California, and crossed the border on foot into Mexicali, Mexico. I didn’t get a very good impression of the place but I suspect it’s true of many border towns. Even if Kathy had not been blonde we probably would have stood out as foreigners. Children often approached us and either asked for money or tried to sell us things. Because of the holiday season they were playing music over loudspeakers in town. I heard Jose Feliciano sing Feliz Navidad many times in the short while that we were there.
Back in the US we headed north past the Salton Sea towards Joshua Tree National Monument (now a National Park). Our plan was to camp there for the holidays before continuing our way to the coast. We would also be checking for mail and buying more supplies in the nearby town of Twentynine Palms, California.
A Joshua Tree is essentially a yucca on steroids. Just picture a tree with yucca plants stuck on each of the branches. They are really quite interesting and some of them can get quite big. We set up our tent in Cottonwood Campground, which was rather open and flat. The weather was mild and sunny but we soon discovered that it tended to get quite windy in the afternoons and evenings.
During one of our first nights there the wind got quite strong and blew our tent down. About all we could do was put some rocks on it so it wouldn’t blow away and retreat to our car. The next morning a woman staying in a nearby campsite came over and invited us to her trailer for breakfast. We took her up on her very kind offer. Then we packed up and moved to Indian Cove Campground, which sat amongst large rock formations. We found a site where we could set our tent next to the rocks. We hoped they would provide some shelter, which they did most of the time.
One afternoon, however, I noticed that I could no longer see some of the rock formations in the distance. After pondering the matter for a while I finally realized that the horizon was hidden behind a huge cloud of sand that was headed our way. Not wanting to see if our campsite could withstand a sandstorm, we dropped our tent down, put some rocks on top of it and again retreated to our car. That night the wind howled, the car shook, and I was very glad we had not tried to stay in the tent.
Calm nights were welcomed, but they also were quite cold. The elevation of the park is about 4000′ so that’s not too surprising. We awoke one morning to discover that the water inside our insulated water jug had frozen. When we headed into town later that day to check for mail and shop, all the locals were talking about the record low temperatures and water pipes freezing and breaking. So, I guess the cold we had experienced that night wasn’t exactly typical for the area.
Twentynine Palms, California, was kind of a small town. It’s situated next to a Marine Corps Base that the city claims is the largest in the world. When I stopped at the local bookstore to buy something new to read I was very disappointed in the selection. The shelves in the small store were filled with books about war and murder or books by Zane Grey. When I asked the owner if he had any books by authors like Mark Twain or Charles Dickens, he told me that Marines don’t read those kind of books. Then he invited us into his house, which was connected to the back of the store, and offered to sell me some of his books. Sure enough, there were some classics, so I bought a few and thanked him for his help in finding something to read. It seemed kind of funny that I had to sneak into the back to buy literature.
It was Christmas Eve. This was the first time we had ever been away from home at Christmas and it seemed a bit lonely. We walked around Twentynine Palms a bit but Christmas decorations in the desert just didn’t seem to convey the spirit of the season. Instead of cooking at the campground we decided to celebrate the holiday by going out to eat. Due to our rather meager budget we ended up at a place like Burger King or some other fast food eatery. We wished each other a Merry Christmas and ate our meal. Then we found a payphone and called home.
Our final event of 1973 was a real let-down. Comet Kahoutek had been discovered earlier in the year and was supposed to pass by earth late in December and be the comet of the century. Boy were those guys wrong! Despite clear skies most nights and plenty of time to gaze up at the heavens, we never spotted it.
Then 1974 arrived and we headed off to L.A.