Adios to California

We’ve returned to Arizona after spending a week each in Desert Center, California and at the Fountain of Youth Spa near Niland, California.  Our trip to Fountain of Youth, known as FOY to it’s inhabitants, was specifically to visit with RVing chums, Roger and Cathy, who always spend their winters enjoying the many activities and amenities of the spa.  After a number of years there, they’ve developed a “neighborhood” of friends and we instantly felt at home among them, with a lot of visiting back and forth and good-natured joshing and lots of good eating.  Too much good eating, but that’s another story.

We got a bit of late start leaving Desert Center and had barely reached cruising speed when traffic came to a screeching halt on I-10 due to a very serious accident involving two semis.  If the CB chatter was accurate, the accident had occurred during the night and still hadn’t been cleared by late morning.  We crept along for an hour or more and finally broke free of the snag and continued on our way.

Our site at FOY was on a terrace so that we overlooked the park models in front of us, giving us a fine view of the Salton Sea and the mountains beyond.  Not that the Salton Sea is much to look at.  Thankfully, prevailing winds took the odor elsewhere.  Once thought of as a premium vacation spot, the Salton is now a “dead sea”, killed off by effluence from the New River and run-off of farm chemicals from the shoreline.  But it certainly does contribute to some lovely vineyards and orchards along the shore, proving that all the desert needs to bloom is water.

Although I’m sure they’ve seen it many times, Roger and Cathy graciously escorted us on a tour of the surrounding area, including a trip to Slab City.  Once a military base, it is now home to a collection of eccentrics, boondockers and assorted other free spirits who don’t seem to mind living without  life’s modern conveniences.  They’ve developed their own society there, including places for entertainment, worship, fellowship and artistic expression.  Maybe even bathrooms and laundromats, although we didn’t see any evidence of that.

At the outskirts of Slab City is Salvation Mountain, an enormous expression of faith by a desert dweller named Leonard Knight.  Leonard loves welcoming visitors to his shrine and when we found him he was having a little mid-morning break in the shade.  He ruefully admitted that he’s “slowing down some” now that he’s 79.  It didn’t look, however, that he’d be running out of paint any time soon.  Mostly the paint has been donated by do-it-yourselfers with left over dribs and drabs but some has come from manufacturers and distributors who’ve erred in their color mixing.  Climbing Salvation Mountain affords a dandy over-view of Slab City which is, all things considered, more attractive the further you get from it.

After descending from The Mountain, we drove off into the desert to what Roger described as “the volcanos and mud pots”.  The terrain was dead flat, once likely sea bed, and we saw little chance of encountering a volcano.  But there they were, barely five  feet tall, in the middle of a sun-baked field.  They burbled and gurgled and spit up hot mud.  Like a kid with bubblegum, one blew big shiny balls of mud which then split and spewed.  After the terrible earthquakes in Japan, it was disconcerting at best to be standing on the San Andreas Fault on ground that gurgled and bubbled.  There is a geo-thermal power plant close by to take advantage of the situation.

It was a relief to all the senses leave the baked ground and sulphur of the mud pots and go just a few miles to a farm which raises flowers for the florist industry.  There were acres and acres of them, stripes of color under the hot sun, and a sweet fragrance in the air.  Again we were amazed at the fertility of the desert once once liberal amounts of water is applied.

It was overcast on the day we chose to go to Anza-Borrego State Park but we couldn’t let a little ugly weather get in our way.  Cathy had researched the weather reports for our destination and advised us to “bundle up”.   And aren’t we glad we took her advice!   We stopped in Borrego Springs for a stroll through an art festival and then again on the outskirts to see the enormous metal sculptures pictured here.

Our next stop was Julian, an historic town high in the mountains, known for its apple crops…and the resulting pies that are sold in all the eateries around town.  It happened to be the Daffodil Festival weekend so things were hopping, bundled up tourists crowed the sidewalks and jammed the restaurants.  We checked out a number of the shops, followed by lunch at The Bakery. 

Once we left Julian the sun was beginning to make an appearance now and again so by the time we got well up into the mountains, the sky was dazzling blue with big fluffy clouds making shadows in the valleys and hillsides.   Wildflowers were in bloom, even at that altitude, and one almost expected to see Julie Andrews skipping through the meadows, apron flapping,  singing about the hills being alive with the sound of music. 

We couldn’t identify most of the wildflowers, especially the shrub shown here, which reminded us so much of Korean lilacs. 

 

 

 

 

Eventually we reached the point where we began our descent into the Imperial Valley to meet Sam and Barb at Tony Roma’s for dinner.  We were all still feeling over-fed from lunch in Julian so we confined ourselves to salads and munchies and some much-needed cold beers and sodas.  Yes, it was a long day but certainly one we’ll always remember for its good company and beautiful scenery.