12/16 - 12/28/05 Sojourn to So Cal - Tracking down old trails |
Southern California's Historic Highways Photo Gallery |
12/18 - I just returned from a soak at the hot pool. I was hoping the heat treatment would help unwind my cramped muscles. I've spent the last 2 afternoons climbing up & down Gypsy's roof ladder & crawling on my hands & knees on the roof. I hope it will be worth it. I finished my solar panel swivel mount & I can now direct it east or west to follow the sun by just pulling on cords attached to either end. With the weather not cooperating (5th overcast day in the last 7), I need those extra watts. I'm not complaining though: I hear the weather back in Oregon is dreadful right now.
We're at Holtville Hot Springs, a Long Term Visitor Area (LTVA) run
by the BLM. It's about 10 miles east of El Centro, CA, and just about
6 miles north of Mexico. There's a modest community of snow birds scattered
out in the sandy desert here. Many are camped down small lanes in the
tamarisk & creosote brush. I think probably everyone partakes of
the hot pools on a regular basis. Very relaxing.
We arrived 2 days ago (Friday) after an overnight stop at Gila Bend. We were quite late getting out of Phoenix, so when I saw a no frills RV park for the unheard of price of $9.49 per night, I pulled in. In the morning we took a side trip to Painted Rocks Recreation Area, about 10 miles west of Gila Bend & 10 miles off the highway. It turned out to be a small rocky hill with thousands of Native American petroglyphs. Almost every stone big enough to mark had designs pecked into it's surface. Some had so many that it was hard to make out the individual symbols. This hill was alongside a trail that generally followed the Gila River & has been used for thousands of years. It was either a place of great significance to the ancient ones or a great place to leave archaic graffiti.
12/20 - It's a good thing the days won't be getting any shorter. Even
with the rotating solar panel, I'm still not quite breaking even on
power on a day when I need to be online for 8 hours of work.
I noticed on the map that Holtville is 17 feet below sea level. Interesting. A branch of the All American Canal runs just a few yards west of us. Timmy likes walking along the road that tops the canal bank. The canal system brings Colorado River water from the Yuma area for irrigation of the Imperial Valley farms. There are some very large lettuce fields on both sides of the road into Holtville. Pretty good chance that your winter salads originate somewhere near here.
Not much going on hereabouts. We'll head on closer to San Diego in a couple of days & use that as a base for doing some Historical Highways research on the old US highways that terminated in southern Cal: 60, 66, 80, 101 & 395. They're pretty much all gone now, except that 101 still exists as a route into LA. But there are various roads still signed as Historic 66, Old 395, etc, that I want to visit.
12/24 - Timmy & I spent today driving some of those roads, US80
through La Mesa & into San Diego, US395 back out of downtown, then
US101, the El Camino Real, by La Jolla, through Rancho 
Santa Fe & all the way to Oceanside. Some of it was quite pleasant,
some just traffic. I'll have to think about how to present all of this
in the format of Historic Highways. It was kind of time warp for me
too, because we lived in the north coast area of the county 30 years
ago.
We're staying at Lake Jennings County Park, about 20 miles east of San Diego & high up in the San Diego Range. It's unusual to have a birds-eye perch high above an urban area. The road getting into the park was just a little hairy, but worth the effort.
12/27 - After a quiet Christmas, we spent all day
yesterday driving. We traveled all the way to Cajon Pass, north of LA
on the old US395 routing. Some of that was scenic, some interesting,
and some downright grueling - avoid Riverside & San Bernardino on
I215 -- awful traffic on a holiday. Cajon Pass is where 395 & Route
66 ran together, so as we came back down we followed the 66 routing
all the way to the end in Santa Monica. That was something of a marathon
too, nearly 4 hours. One community after another, some nice, some not
so nice. Some heavy traffic, some near expressway movement. Some cities
seemed to embrace their 66 connection and some seemed indifferent. It
was dark by the time we got to the beach, but I stopped anyway. We both
needed a break. We still had a 2 hour drive back to our base in San
Diego. No sightseeing on the last leg.
Yesterday was also the 1 year anniversary of our life on the road. We only drove about 3 hours that first day, from Eugene to Medford. But the next day was brutal. I won't repeat the story here, since it's all there on that first web page. But it was the start of a pretty rough month for us. It was also the start of an incredible year. Over 20,000 miles, most of the western states, an amazing number of wonderful sights & experiences & the start of a new career as a photojournalist.
Today was a welcome day of rest, although I also spent some more time on the roof. I decided that I wanted to mount the second solar panel on a swivel since we're going to be coping with short days for the next month. Might as well get all the sun there is to get. We'll be leaving here tomorrow & will need it for the next few days.
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