March 14 to March 19, 2017
The Flight Out of Mexico
After the luxury accommodations in Ensenada, a stroll along the waterfront, and the purchase of a replacement hose, we headed to the crossing at Tecate. Tecate is east of Tijuana, west of Mexicali, and the least-used crossing of the three. We stayed at a rancho in the mountains before crossing, a very well appointed and maintained joint, about twenty minutes from the border. We were the only residents of the large campground, except for the one old gringo who had been there three years, feeding the wild cats and doing acrostic word puzzles. Mexico is a place you really can disappear into, if you were on the run from something or just want to disappear a la Ambrose Bierce or the guy who wrote The Treasure of the Sierra Madre whose actual and pen-name both escape me at the moment . The place had a miniature golf course, of all things, an 18 hole, really difficult one. We stayed two nights at Rancho Ojia. The only drawback of the place was that the road fronting the camp was pitched downward steeply and ended in a sharp turn, so all night and day the truckers were descending in low gear, blowing the engine compression out the stacks at an incredible volume. I suppose you could get used to it.
Made our run to Tecate and the border then, stopping to fuel up along the way. I had been trying to sell the bicycles we had bought for 60 dollars in Florida lo these many months ago. I tried again at the Pemex gas station, “Tengo dos bicecletas para la venta” the selling phrase I had been repeating in several preceding towns. “No money senor,” said the station attendant, but he called over a woman working inside the station. She went inside the Scamp to examine the bikes and made gestures of unsureness. I took them out of the Scamp. The station attendant rode one around the station making ‘yippee’ type noises and we all laughed. She asked “Cuanto cuesta?” I said “Ochociente.” She thought, then shook her head. I didn’t know how to say “make me an offer” but made gestures I hoped suggested that notion. She said “siciente(?)” and I said “done” and sold them for 600 pesos, thirty dollars.
Then I had to get rid of the pesos before crossing the border so drove around Tecate until I found a tequila store.
The line for the crossing, the finding of which involved some minor adventures in which the Mexican police took a helping hand, was an hour long. Vendors sold water and foodstuffs along the line and we used up the last of our pesos buying our first churros, fried breadsticks coated with cinnamon and sugar crystals.
An easy passing through the border, once we arrived. We were diverted to the special inspection area because we had a trailer and had been so long in Mexico, which I had been led to expect. The inspector had some Maryland history and was also a Scamp owner, so we talked about those things and less about the heroin, Mexicans, and guns hidden in the trailer.
Back in the USA
I sent the kids an e-mail when we got back in the States in the form of a riddle, “We are where the King of Rock and Roll said ‘…the hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day.’ ” I doubt they got the reference to Chuck Berry’s “Back in the USA” but I like to expand their horizons. (“From the coast of California to the shores of the Delaware Bay.”) The next day The King of Rock and Roll crossed over to The Promised Land.
Just thirty miles from the border we stayed in a pastoral park, in Potrero, San Diego County. Only forty miles from downtown San Diego but this place was as bucolic as the English countryside. A Baja “caravan” of five big rigs pulled in later. These are people who paid $1,600 to be led around Baha for three weeks, with a guide making arrangements. I had looked into that before starting out and thought about it. Some of the caravaners started hosing down their rigs as soon as they arrived, despite the California water use restrictions and even though they looked pristine already compared to ours. “Yep, we’re home” we said to ourselves. We were sad about leaving Baja until we reached our next destination at
Salton Sea, California
I could not not go to the Salton Sea which I had always heard of as one of the country’s great ecological disasters. A fascinating place, and not quite what I thought. In 1905 a mismanaged scheme to divert water from the Colorado River, via a canal that went through Mexico, went wrong. The dikes failed and for sixteen months the entire flow of the Colorado poured into this area 300 feet below sea level and created California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea. It is 46 miles long and almost as wide and has no natural outflow. In the late 1950s and through the 1960s it became a swinging rat-pack era destination. Golf courses, hot mineral springs all around, hotels, bars, seaside resorts. Speedboat records were set here—the high salt level of the water made the boats ride higher and the low elevation made the engines perform better. By the late 1960s scientists stared to realize that, with no natural outflow except evaporation, the salt levels of the lake were rising rapidly and killing the various fish species that had been introduced. Also, the shoreline was rapidly receding. Jump forward to the present and you have ghost towns surrounding the “sea” whose salinity is half again as salty as the ocean. The only fish that can tolerate it are the introduced tilapia, and they die in record numbers and coat the shoreline which is now a long distance from the various forms of beachfront amusements built fifty years ago. The “beach” is a mixture of salt and decomposed fish skeletons. Brenda got a fish bone stuck in her foot walking the “ beach.” During its lifetime the Salton has become an important flyway for migrating birds and its disappearance would have a serious impact on a great number of migrating waterfowl, so schemes are regularly proposed and partially enacted to save this accidental lake. Meanwhile agricultural nutrients continue to run into it from the Imperial Valley and the salt content increases as it concentrates through evaporation. An odd challenge, this body of water. Saving the Salton was a primary objective of California Senator Sonny Bono’s, to add another element of strangeness to the Salton saga.
The Imperial Valley here, irrigated from the Colorado, is the most intensely cultivated ag areas on earth. The breadth and variety is astonishing. You eat from it, I eat from it, frequently.
There are several VERY large RV parks here between Niland and Mecca, CA. Fountain of Youth has over 1,000 sites. We stayed at Bashford’s Hot Springs ($37.50/night) which has close to 200 sites. Most of these sites are taken up by long-term renters, mostly Canadians from BC. They arrive in October and leave before their six month visas run out making them subject to US income tax. They were all in the process of leaving when we arrived so we had the pick of the best spots and got one right near the mineral baths. As a bonus, we found ourselves next to the nicest people in Salton, if not the hemisphere. He offered me a beer after I sweated from setting up the camper, and later brought us a gallon of water because the park water was very minera. Ian of Vancouver Island was traveling with his on-again off-again companion Kate who flew from her home in Ireland to winter over with Ian in Salton, he himself being a child of the Emerald Isle. Such genuine and sweet folks, and it was St. Patrick’s Day when we arrived so we got to spend it with souls of the old sod.
The heavily-mineral laden water comes out of the ground here above boiling. They pump it up into cooling towers and it flows into six concrete tubs where one soaks in the still-very hot water. The ambient temperature is closing in on 100 here during the day so when you come out of the hot baths the air feels cool, long enough to get you to sunset.
The San Andreas fault ends, or begins, here. The mountains are giant synclines going every which way. In some narrow passes you can touch the North American tectonic plate with one hand and the Pacific plate with the other. A rare formation called a ‘fault gouge’ emerges here, which we visited, driving a few miles into the desert. It is just ground up rock like plain red dirt but it is the material that has been ground under the earth at the interface of the two tectonic plates.
Stayed two nights, enjoying a band at the community center the second night. An acoustic guitar player singer and a bass player singer of some age; the harmonica player and his wife the trap drummer were both ninety years old. The harp player made a nice pass at “Yellow Bird” which made me think of Whitey Madrzkowski who liked to sing and play that number on guitar. I think of you often, Whitey.
We also went to Slab City, not far away. Since the 1960s, through some fluke of confusion between state and federal government, this large piece of desert was taken over by anarchists, free spirits, and other outsiders and has become a habitat of squatters living in every kind of makeshift structure. We just drove through so I can’t answer questions about the operations or governance of this city, or even if such mindfulness is present here. It has a library, some entertainment places, a gigantic “outsider art” construction dedicated to Jesus and the Bible. I don’t think there is anything like this place in the world.