Road Trip: Desert Dunes and So Much More

Southern California's Algodones Dunes reach south to the Mexican border.

 Armchair Adventures

for Feb. 26, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

photos by CG

Getting There Really Is Half the Fun

            It's as true in the west as it is in the East: the real fun doesn't start till you ditch those Interstates and take to the blue-line highways on the map.

            The round-robin road trip we took to the Southern California desert a few weeks back was only half the story. At least half the thrill of discovery came on long route we took getting there and back.

            Here are some highlights from that drive, all but one of which we would have missed sticking strictly to major highways:

            Funky little Arizona cowboy towns like Hope, where one sign welcomes visitors, the next tells you "Your Beyond Hope." (And just a few miles beyond, a propane company's huge white tank bears the inscription: "Passmore Gas.")

            You can't make this stuff up.

            A summit of Harquahala Mountain, where Smithsonian scientists lived in lonely vigil for decades to measure the sun's intensity.

            Quartzsite, an Arizona desert town magnetically attracting thousands of winter-escapee RVers to a variety of events. It is on I-10, and we stopped at a specialty store selling every imaginable sort of jerky. In its parking lot was the sealed entrance to an old "Jerky Mine," complete with miner's rail car. A jerky mine? It's cowboy humor. One of those things you "get" … or never will.

            Quartzsite’s cemetery has a most unusual monument-to a camel driver. It tells of a Syrian-born man whose anglicized name was "Hi Jolly," and of his loyal service to the U.S. Government for 30 years as a camel driver in the famed-but-now-forgotten Army experiments with a herd of those animals in the late 19th century.

            A few miles west of Love in Arizona, you’ll find the town of Salome. A fellow named Dick Wick long ago opened a gas station on US 60-once the main road linking Phoenix and Los Angeles. Wick, a born promoter, aimed to put his place on the traveler’s map. He did this with funny roadside signs to entertain desert-crossing drivers, and with the little humor newspaper that he published. His “Salome Sun,” was chock full of Wick’s tall tales, and created a curiosity that brought customers to his businesses.

            Even his town’s name was an improvisation, starting as Salome-Where-She-Danced, and in time shortened to her proper noun. Among his other claims, Wick said he had the ultimate golf course: 247 miles long with a par of 16,394. Wick’s humor spread far beyond Salome, as readers learned of the town’s old frog, that never learned to swim because it didn’t have to.

            The Algodones Dunes in southern California's enormous desert look like a scene from Africa's endless Sahara sands. They have served Hollywood well as a substitute for its beautiful-but-deadly African counterpart.

            A green valley in Arizona's high country where horses graze beneath tall trees on luscious grass in a picture you'd swear came from Kentucky's Blue Grass Country. A few miles to the west, this world falls away as highway 89 tumbles off a mountainside, depositing shocked desert newcomers to wonder what happened to that cooler, greener world.

            It is as sudden and radical a change in the land as you can find. And you won't find it on an interstate highway.

            Heading west, this is the start of the desert stretching all the way to California's coastal range, the final barrier before the sea.

            It's also the land of legendary pioneer settlers like Bill Kirkland and Pauline Weaver. Kirkland, a big tough fellow, brought his family out from his native Virginia in 1856 and despite heavy opposition from native peoples, set up the state's first cattle ranch. He lived well into the 20th century.

            Now about that other pioneer, Weaver.  Born in Tennessee to an Indian mother and a white father, his given name was Powell, but that was later altered to a more familiar Paulino by Spanish-speaking friends and, later still, to Pauline-the name that stuck for the remainder of his eventful life.

            Weaver was both a peacemaker during troubled times with Southwestern Indians and a guide, scout and prospector. At his death he was accorded full military honors for his service to the Government. Much later, after two burials, he was interred on the grounds of Arizona's first state capital, at Prescott.

            The inscription on his monument at the Sharlott Hall Museum there reads, in part:

Pioneer • Prospector • Scout • Guide
Pauline Weaver
Truly a Great Man
Born in Tennessee in 1800
Died at Camp Verde
June 21, 1867

           

           

             

           

           

Borrego Springs-The Way Desert Living Should Be

Armchair Adventures

for Feb. 19, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

Borrego Springs-at the Heart of It All

            Sooner or later every travel writer comes across a place that tugs at the soul. It might be east or west, mountain or seashore, but the writer wonders if publicity could  contribute to its "discovery," which may bring a loss of the color and character that made it special in the first place.

            Borrego Springs, California, is that kind of place.

            It would be wrong to call this quiet-literally and figuratively-village in the desert east of San Diego a sleepy outpost. The 3,500 souls who call it home, many of them escapees from California's supercharged coastal cities, are attracted to its seductive beauty and the absence of anything frantic about daily life there.

            Borrego Springs is unusual if not unique in so many ways. For starters, this high desert community, sprawling over 44-square-miles, is landlocked-totally surrounded by the massive, 620,000-acre Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

            Last week I wrote about the park, one of the nation's finest desert playgrounds for outdoor lovers-artists, astronomers, off-roaders, campers and cyclists, rock hounds and many others.

            Borrego Springs is, you might say, the human capitol of the park, whose visitor center lies two miles west of the town center at Christmas Circle, on Palm Canyon Drive.

You can cross the street anywhere you like here, traffic is always light and it is one of those places with no traffic lights and not enough business to attract the fast-food chains.

            But this is no dusty cowboy town, and among its assorted stores a curious tourist can find any necessity and quite a few non-essentials, as well as a nice variety of places to dine. (Pssst: newbies have to ask to find the food market.) And there are two small malls.

            In our brief stay earlier this month, my friend CG and I had dinner at Carlees,' just off the circle, and liked our breakfast so much at Kendall's Café that we made a return visit. (Leftovers from Carlees were bountiful, so we stashed 'em in the fridge in our room, where they made an ample second-night's feast.)

            A quick internet search for lodging lead us to think there were scant choices. Wrong. We discovered while wandering about town, that there are more than half a dozen that appeared to be fine. We chose the Borrego Springs Resort, which with an internet-only special came to a more-than-reasonable $79 a night. I would have expected to pay double that amount for the accommodations.

            Next time-and there definitely will be a next time-we'll opt for camping under the blazing desert star-fire and spend the last night or two at the Resort.

            Borrego Springs is an astronomers' paradise, with dark skies to define that term and the official "dark sky" designation from the International Dark Sky Association. Incidentally, those who have never seen the heavenly sights from a high-desert locale have a memorable moment in store-no place else can compare.

            For those who miss a city culture fix, I would point out another highly unusual feature of Borrego Springs: Scattered hither and yon are enormous, dramatic metal sculptures of prehistoric (extinct) creatures unearthed in Anza-Borrego by paleontologists. We saw several and, together with an excellent display in the park visitor center's small museum and accompanying film, we felt ourselves on a journey of discovery.

            For those who might like to sample life in a low-key desert resort, just remember this single, overriding fact: this is a true desert place. That means you visit from November through March; never in summer. True desert rats can ignore this; others should not.

            And although I drove 300 miles from Arizona to reach Borrego Springs, I recommend that East Coast travelers instead fly to San Diego, rent a car and drive the less than 100 miles. Hopeless urbanites might give it a couple of days. Hard-core outdoor types allow a week…each winter.

           

           

Anza-Borrego: A World Apart

as published Feb. 12, 2012

Anza-Borrego: A World Apart

            Every serious traveler has either been to or plans to see San Diego, but how many have even heard of the vast Anza-Borrego Desert State Park?

            Anza-Borrego lies-literally-just over the mountains from Southern California's gorgeous city-by-the-sea, but it might as well be on the other side of the Earth.

            At the heart of stunningly beautiful Anza-Borrego lies the small resort town of Borrego Springs, which is entirely surrounded by this second largest state park in the country.  Encompassing well over 600,000 acres of wildly varied terrain-including a number of distinct mountain ranges, desert valleys, dunes and remote wilderness areas-Anza-Borrego is a world unto itself; a place of many faces.

            I would not have known of it but for friend Betsy True's having visited there on outings with the San Diego Audubon's Society's yearly bird festival.

            On a visit to Arizona last week, a friend and I drove the 300 miles from Prescott to Borrego Springs to check the place out-see if it would be worth a longer stay. The verdict?

            Why did we wait so long to see this dramatically beautiful yet so little known part of our always-surprising U.S. of A.?

            Native Californians are thoroughly familiar with the state's basic geography-a vast, hot and dry desert that lies beyond a coastal mountain range from the numerous warm and more humid cities.

            Many of them also know that while these desert lands are inhospitable in summer, they are magnificent places to visit from late Fall till mid-Spring. Indeed, it seemed that many residences in Borrego Springs were winter vacation homes.

            The park's rich human and natural history are both captured in its unusual name-Anza, from Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza, and Borrego, a Spanish word for the Big-Horn Sheep found in its rugged and remote mountains when they explored a new route to California in 1775-76.

            Today, the descendants of the peninsula big-horn sheep they saw on their long trek to the coast continue to hold out in these nearly impenetrable mountain ranges.

            One day when we hiked into a steep canyon not far from Borrego Springs, the first question other hikers asked was: "Did you see any big-horns?"

            Unfortunately, we did not, as the sheep, like other desert wildlife, are out and about on the mountains in early morning and late afternoon.

            That hike, one of the park's most popular, takes visitors into Borrego Palm Canyon, a quiet oasis where tall palm trees line a cool, shaded spring-fed stream. Places like this have to be experienced to be appreciated. I would say it was like a movie-set, but that would not do it justice.

            There are many such shady, palm-filled declivities in Anza-Borrego, but most are far less accessible.

            At times, trudging along in the boulder laden canyon leading to the Palm Canyon, I stopped to look around, taking in the high, rocky mountain flanks on both sides of the trail, hoping for a glimpse at one of those elusive mountain sheep. How, I marveled, could any animal navigate those treacherous rocks and ledges?

            On the trek in, we hiked with Ruth and Hal, visiting from California's Orange County near Los Angeles. I joked that these native Hoosiers were doing pretty well for youngsters. "Yep," said Ruth, "I'm only 78 and my cousin here is just 86."

            "I hope to meet you on this trail many years from now," I said.