Labor Day Weekend - 2003

Day 1 I sat at my desk flipping through the guide on the TV. Nothing worth watching on until late Sunday. Well, I've got tonight and two full days with nothing to do. I suppose I could go to the beach again, or head up to LA, or even go see a movie. All those ideas were unappealing though, so I decided to take a trip. A few weeks earlier a friend had told me a great website that had maps and stories about some excellent canyon roads around the Los Angeles area. I had driven up to Mt. Wilson the week before and had a great time on the drive (even though it's not even rated on the site) so I thought I'd try out one of the other ones. I looked at the map, I could head up towards San Francisco, south to San Diego, or North East. I've been through the area between the bay area and LA, and to the trip down I-5 to San Diego on Labor Day Weekend would have been long and slow. The roads going east went towards big bear lake and Las Vegas, either of which would be fun to visit. By now it was late afternoon. I quickly packed and got my sleeping bag ready. I ordered dinner from Pizza Hut thinking that I could be ready in fifteen minutes and then eat on the road. Just before leaving I had a thought - I should get some maps of where to go... So I turned on the printer which gets used a few times a year and started printing out what I thought might be useful. Unfortunately, the printer wasn't working right so I had to give up on my dinner plans. I ran down to the store and got grapes, apples, crackers, and a gallon of water and then got the food and headed back to get those maps printed. Eventually I got everything in order and hopped into the car. It took a while to get out of the megapolis but eventually I found the road I was looking for - CA Hwy 18 to Big Bear. The road is called Rim of the World Drive, it's a two-lane each divided highway that winds up 5000 feet from San Bernardino to Big Bear Lake. The sun had set and it was dark by the time I started up, traffic was light enough and having two lanes made passing easy. There are a lot of scenic turnouts, looking back on the city was a nice sight with lights going out to the horizon. The sun had set long ago but the night sky was still slightly lit. Highway 18 turns into a two lane road that winds up into the hills. The road is old, but in good condition. There are no guardrails like you would find on most roads; instead there are stone pillars connected with lengths of chain. The night was still warm and I had the windows and sunroof open. As I drove past each segment of these guards the pillars would woosh past, each a distinct sound pattern. There was slower traffic, of course, but there are many passing lanes and the people going slow were for the most part courteous to faster traffic. As I climbed into the mountains the air cooled off but it was still warm enough to keep the windows open. I soon reached Big Bear Lake which is at a plateau but not at the top of the mountain. The night had fully come but a quarter moon was in the sky which gave just enough light through the trees to show the open expanse of the lake. I pulled over into an open day-use parking spot right off the road. I took the path that led down to the water, using my keychain LED light to find my way. The dome of stars over the lake was absolutely amazing. A million pinpricks of light representing billions upon billions of stars and reaching back billions of years into the past. The light blue band of our own galaxy dividing the sky in two. The stars were so bright that you could see the trees surrounding the lake since they were darker than their background. The lights of houses dotted the hillside and the shoreline, Big Bear being a popular tourist destination from the LA area. Big Bear lake was not my destination. I still had an entire weekend to have fun with and I was only a few hours from home. I looked at the map and it showed the canyon roads continuing to the north and into the desert. The 18 and the 38 cross in the city, the 18 continues north and the 38 loops back to the valley. I followed the signs and took the 18 north. Unfortunately, the painted lines down the center of the road ended after a quarter mile. I supposed I had chosen poorly. Since I didn't have a destination in mind anyway, I decided to just keep on going and see where the road took me. The worst case was that I hit a dead end or just got tired, in which case I could sleep in the car and find my way out in the daylight. Then the road dead ended into a T, no signs, no lights, no traffic, just the end of the road. I had to make a decision, left or right. Eventually I chose left and a few hundred yards later saw a sign that said "18" on it. "Whew!" I thought, back on track. Then I realized that I didn't know if I was going north or south, so I pulled over to try to figure it out. With no compass in the car, and no moon in the sky, and the north star hidden by the mountainside, I had no idea how to find north. I saw the flash of an airport beacon, but then realized I didn't know where the airport was anyway, so that was no help. Then I had an inspiration; Mars! Mars is in the southern sky and unmistakable. Thus I discovered I was driving in the wrong direction, so I backtracked and headed out into the night. The road climbed higher into the mountains. Eventually reaching the summit which is where the trees began to thin, turning into the high desert. The traffic on the road was very light now since most of the people coming up from Southern California have Big Bear as their destination. The winding road had much tighter turns but was still in excellent condition. As I neared the valley floor I came around a corner doing about 60. Ahead were the unmistakable lights of someone holding a flashlight and directing traffic. I jumped on the brakes and turned on my flashers to help anyone coming up behind me. The cab of a semi truck was facing towards the side of the road in the oncoming lanes, a police officer directing traffic. As I pulled up and shut off my flashers, I asked the cop "Is this north or south?" I wanted to make sure I was going the right direction, there had been no signs letting me know my direction and I had no maps. "What?" he asked. "Am I heading north or south?" I repeated. He gave me an incredulous look, like he couldn't believe the question. What kind of a moron is an hour from the nearest city and doesn't know what direction he's going? "North." he said. I thanked him and continued on my way around the hairpin turn. The trailer part of the truck was alone and blocking traffic on the opposite side of the road, he must have turned too sharp and lost his connection. Another officer was directing traffic in the southbound side. Soon the road began to level out, to the left I saw a huge factory lit up in the night. I pulled over and took a picture of the site. I found out later that this is the Mitsubishsi Cement Plant - the largest of its kind in the world, producing 1.6 million tons of concrete a year. The road reached the valley floor and became completely straight. I pulled over to take a look at the stars. The desert was still warm, the roadside sandy, lights in the far distance but nothing nearby was illuminated. Giant cement trucks drove by every few minutes at high speed, headed for the concrete plant. I continued on. Soon I came upon a gas station, in the "city" and stopped to fill up and get batteries for the camera. The store had a map of the area on it - I was in Lucerne Valley. It was now getting late, so I was thinking about finding a place to sleep. On the map I saw a place labeled "Landslide" with a comment that it was a highly studied place. So I headed out towards it, thinking I could wake up and check it out in the morning. Unfortunately, I never found it, so I just pulled off onto a side road. I got out and laid the blanket on the roof. The air was still plenty warm so I felt fine in shorts and a t-shirt. Amazingly the sky was even clearer and filled with the mind boggling beauty of the universe. The silence out there was absolutely amazing, no cars, no people, and surprisingly enough - no crickets. Just breathing made more noise than anything else did. Eventually I laid out the sleeping bag inside the car and dozed off. Sleeping in the trunk of a neon isn't easy, but it certainly makes for an adventure. Day 2 - Morning The car was plenty warm, too warm in fact. The desert heat burned off around 3am so I huddled up in the sleeping bag. The windows were cracked which let enough air in to keep it comfortable. The occasional passing car could be heard but I was far enough away that the car didn't rock in the rush of wind. A few times I woke up and looked outside, through the windows the sky still looked full of stars. The fifth or sixth time I awoke the sun was thinking about rising; there was the slight glow from the east, just enough to give a glow and give definition to the far off mountains but dark enough to still be night. I dozed again and woke just before sunrise, I slipped out of the car and took a quick picture before jumping back into the sleeping bag to warm up. Back in the car I tried to block out the light in order to catch an extra hour sleep. The car started to get warm so I had to wake up. I got out of the car and changed clothes right there on the side of the road, in plain sight of uh, a whole lot of empty land. In the dawn light I was able to see where I had spent the night. The dirt road I was on extended up to the distant mountainside, probably to a mine. I was in a dirt turnaround where the dirt road crossed the main highway. The desert valley floor stretched for miles in every direction, as far as the eye could see. I drove up to a nearby hill to take a picture of the area. Facing South you can see where I had stayed the night, right on the edge of the big dirt turn-around area. Now I had to decide where I wanted to go, so I pulled out the map and looked at my choices. North was Barstow and Las Vegas, East was a lot of empty land, South took me back home, and West took me through the desert towards Arizona. Vegas is fun but I've been there several times and was just there in August, so that was out. I still had two full days of weekend left so I didn't really want to go home. Going East was a big trip, but I've never been to Lake Havasu or that part of the Colorado River... East it is! Before I headed out I wanted to check out the High Altitude Model Rocket launch area that's on the dry lake bed in Lucerne Valley. That meant heading back to town, so I took the 10 minute drive back to town. In the daylight I was able to see one of the mine's up on the hill so I took a quick detour up to it to take a picture. This facility is the Specialty Minerals limestone mine. The road towards the launch area cuts right through the dry lake. I had never been to a dry lake bed before so I wasn't sure what to expect. The road was about three feet higher than the surrounding land, which looked like dry mud. I pulled off to the side and got out to look around. The dirt was firm and slightly cracked, nearby was a tiny gulch that still had some wet mud in the bottom. When it rains it must turn into an actual lake, but then it evaporates rather quickly, leaving a fairly flat surface. The rocket launch area turned out to be a completely vagabond site, when they come out to launch (by my luck, the next weekend) they bring everything with them, including over a hundred launch rails. Now though, nothing. So I turned around and headed back out of town towards Arizona. Traffic was still fairly light, I was able to pass the slower people and cruise along the endless roads. After passing through a small town the radar detector started hitting hard from behind, and it kept hitting. What this usually means is that there is a patrol car with his radar on driving in the same direction I am. With the roads so open and expansive I didn't want to zoom ahead and have him sneak up on me so I pulled off onto a side road to let him pass. As luck would have it I stopped under the sign for the smallest town I've ever seen. The whole city must have been inside that fence. The cop never did pass, so it must have been someone with a really cheap radar detector with a broken baseline transmitter. The landscape stayed the same, endless miles of scrub brush and dirt until it hit the treeless mountains. No rivers, no lakes, not even ponds or creeks. No trees, no bushes, not even much variety in what did live out there. I live in LA which is a desert, but we pipe in all of our water so there is plenty to support all sorts of life, but out here it's natural, and everything struggles to live at all. A hard existence for anyone and anything trying to make a life here. And yet people did, somehow, for some reason. There were dozens of tiny houses dotting the valley that had been abandoned. Each one looking to be a single room, built of cinder blocks, equally spaced out, and all abandoned with sagging roofs and broken windows. The kitchen was old, probably 40 years old. The blob of a melted candle on the corner of the stove. Yellowed paper on the shelves, old cans on the shelves. I dared not to touch anything, I was only there to learn from it not to change it. The living room had an old dusty couch, the bedroom had bunk beds. It almost looked like the previous occupants had left in hurry, they left sheets and pillows on the beds, items in the dresser. Dust caked everything and it all looked old. I didn't touch anything, the place was a museum, a glimpse into the remnants of someone's abandoned life. I've always loved long sections of highway that are perfectly straight, the way the lines converge just speaks to the distance involved. Nearby I saw what looked like an abandoned entrance to a mine, so I stopped and walked over to take a look. It was only 9am or so but it was already so hot that I couldn't cool off even with my shirt off. The site turned out to be an old sluice for a mine that had been dismantled long ago. The only things left were those too heavy to transport. I took a picture of the road and where I parked from that hill. Walking back I saw a giant hole leading to an ant colony (well, giant as far as ant holes go). I got down to look closer and it turns out that a black ant colony was mopping up after an invasion of a gnat type bug's home. There were dead black ants around the outside of the hill and the black ants were bringing the young or dead gnats up to the surface to die in the sun. Miles later I saw a lake in the distance. Well, actually I realized it was probably a mirage, but you could see the salt around the edges so it could have been real water. They race the fastest land vehicles on the planet on dry salt flats in this area and I've always wanted to see just how flat it is. So I took the dirt road that looked like it wound around the lake and came to the opposite shore near some grain towers. The towers were abandoned long ago, they must have stored the salt after mining it. A company had put a low dam across part of the valley. The rainwater carries the salt off the mountains into the valley where it gets trapped and evaporates, leaving the salt behind. The land gets lumpy though, not at all like a salt "flat". Wherever you step on the salt and break through the crust you'll find damp dirt underneath, it's an amazing insulator. The day got hotter and hotter. I, of course, had been putting off getting the air conditioning fixed so I had the windows down and the sunroof open. The heat was getting unbearable though, the open windows blowing hot air in, I couldn't cool off and there's no shade out in the lifeless desert. The distant mountains are barren and don't erode as quickly when there are no trees to break the rock up into soil. A lot of the mountains are merely giant rocks sticking up out of the valley floor. Looking back on a very long, very empty valley. Finally I reached the Colorado River. For the last several hours the heat had been nearly unbearable. On even the hottest days in LA I get by without air conditioning in the car; once you get a breeze going you cool off. When it's 110oF out, having a window open merely makes it feel like you're sticking your head in a blast furnace. I could feel my skin baking as I drove down the road and there wasn't any towns, any rest stops, absolutely nowhere that offered shade. Getting to the river was a welcome sight, the first thing I did was jump in; the water was warmer than I've ever been in and the clarity was great. There were boats everywhere, so many that I'd have been afraid of having a collision if I were out in a boat. Again though it was so hot that as soon as you got out of the water you were dry and sweating again. So I jumped back in the car and headed north towards Lake Havasu City. Parker Dam came before that, it had many signs saying "Closed - 11pm - 5am" and that trucks weren't allowed. I couldn't imagine why, but when I got to the dam there were dividers that were extremely tight, even for the neon. There was even a guard on the dam doing whatever it is government employees like that do all day. Day 2 - Afternoon Amazingly enough it got even hotter, so hot that by the time I got to the city I could hardly see straight. I knew it was going to be a hot trip so I had bought a gallon of water before starting the trip but even that isn't enough to help when it's 110 and you have no shade or air conditioning. The only thing I could think of was finding a place with air conditioning, so I stopped and got a smoothie and slowly sipped it at it in their cool place. Next I wandered over to the bookstore and read a book and took a quick nap. By then it was 4pm or so and it was still unbearably hot outside, so I decided to go see a movie to kill more time till sunset. After the movie it was STILL too hot to go anywhere, so I stopped and got dinner. Finally it was cool enough that I wouldn't pass out from the heat. The main part of Lake Havasu is a great bridge they call "London Bridge". Matt L. pointed out that this is actually *the* London Bridge. In the 1960's it was moved brick by brick from London to the Arizona desert: http://www.outwestnewspaper.com/london.html London Bridge crosses over a thin section of water which is where all the boats cruise and all the party goers drink. I knew I wouldn't be able to drive back through the desert the next day, so I got on the 40 going back west and cruised along on there. I made it to Barstow and then turned south on the 126 headed back to Lucerne Valley. Around 10pm I stopped at the top of a hill off to the side of the road and set up camp. This time the ground was gravel instead of dirt like the night before, so I just set the sleeping bag on the ground next to the car. I was able to get a great shot of the moon. And of mars and the star field around it. As before, it's tough sleeping without a tent. I woke up often whenever there was a sound. Each time mars was a bit further along in the sky. When the sun rose I got a nice shot of it cresting over the mountaintop. Heading back into Lucerne Valley. You can see how the nearby mountains are still shrouded in darkness while the entire valley is lit. Taking the 18 back to Big Bear and looking back on Lucerne Valley. At Big Bear Lake is a solar observatory that juts out into the water. And you can see the lake from the dam near the city. After that I just headed home, turned on the air conditioning, and lounged around watching movies all day long.

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