March 19 to March 24, 2017—Joshua Tree and environs
Snagged a spot at Cottonwood Springs camp in Joshua Tree National Park for two nights, south end of the park. Nature lovers from many states were piling in to enjoy the exceptional weather and to see the wildflowers and cactuses in bloom (“You should have seen Baja,” I didn’t say to anyone) and all the six camps were full Another feather in the national cap is Joshua Tree. What farsightedness of our ancestors to preserve these places. Now climate change is having a measurable effect on the strange Joshua Tree; foresight is always in demand, I guess.
[A chuckwalla lizard in Joshua Tree.]
Met a nice fella camping at the park who lives in the San Pedro neighborhood of LA who offered us a space in his driveway when we get there. We had booked a couple nights at an expensive RV park in Long Beach to visit my niece Caitlin and planned on leaving LA after that but if one of us, walking down Wilshire Boulevard or having a phosphate at Schwabs, gets discovered by a director we might have to stay for a screen test.
After two nights on the south side of Joshua Tree we relocated to a private campground outside the north sidefor one night so we could hike around Black Rock Canyon. The town is Twentynine Palms. There is a Marine base nearby and the town exists to serve that entity. There are many choices in Twentynine Palms if you need to get your hair cut or if you need a massage. The massage choices include Okinawan, Thai, Ancient Thai, Vietnamese, Tokyo-style, and others. Nuanced variations of things interest me; I might have to research this.
Spent over two hours at a Verizon store in Yucca Valley, trying to sort out the problems with Brenda’s tablet. We had purchased it specifically for this trip and it stopped working before we entered Mexico which meant no Verizon stores for three months. After fooling around with it for a long time while Brenda and I went out for lunch the store techs said they will have to ship it off to the factory for repair and will lose all the photos she has taken with it over seven months. Are you fucking kidding me? At the end of the long tet a tet with the technicians in the store and on the phone at headquarters, one of them had the nerve, per their orders, to ask “are you satisfied with your Verizon service experience today?” “No, actually, I’m furious that you can’t save the contents of the hard drive and give me a new device right now.” Nothing like a tech problem and a manualized service industry to undo the months of calm demeanor I had cultivated south of the border. And I am sure someone could save the photos on the hard drive if they were devoted to it.
Drove here, to Adelanto CA, a nondescript camp in a nondescript town. The Air Force closed their base here some years ago and the town has been struggling ever since. They made a bad or corrupt deal with companies that run prisons so now there are four large prisons here which generate hardly any tax revenue. The campground is at 3,000 feet and higher ranges are visible east and west. Storm clouds were cresting the mountains from the Pacific in dramatic fashion as we arrived, threatening storms. Instead of rain a windstorm kicked up and obscured views in all directions to less than a hundred yards. It lasted for an hour. Cool!
We took an uber hire to a thai restaurant a mile away. It was too cold and windy to walk. The place was a small house in an empty dirt lot, with nothing to distinguish it as a place of business except a small “open” sign and a tiny sign perched on the roof gutter with the name “thai-siam.” One old guy and his cat, three four-top tables, books on Buddhism and thai magazines scattered everywhere. The single copy of the menu had been stolen from another thai restaurant and had a piece of masking tape covering the price column on the right. He spoke little to no English, took our order, or “an” order, and disappeared in back to cook it. Meanwhile he brought Brenda an enormous goblet of white wine. Needless to say the food was excellent. We sat around with him for a while and watched some thai karaoke with him, laughing at the laughable performers. I expressed commiseration on the death of his king, who passed in October and whose pictures adorned the walls. He disparaged the current king. All this communicating done in mime. As we were leaving he brought me two bottles of Sing Ha to go, on the house, the total bill an even $30.00. He and Brenda hugged.