California

Where to begin. Where did I leave off before.  Arizona watching the NCAA tournament in the desert heat. Not my favorite stop.

We left Arizona on March 29 and made our way to the Coachella Valley in California. We were unable to get into the park of our choice and so spent a couple of days boondocking in the parking lot at the Morengo Casino in Cabazon, CA. Just down the road from Palm Springs. We then moved back to the Palm Springs Oasis RV Park in Cathedral City, CA where we stayed for a week…. long enough to get through the NCAA Championship.

California is an amazingly beautiful state…. and we have only seen a tiny bit of it so far. It’s easy to see why so many people have wanted to move here from the rest of the country. They’ve pulled water out of the ground and out of the Colorado river to turn the state into a paradise. Now with so many people needing water for their crop (dates, citrus, avocados, vegetables, hay and other stuff that I can’t identify), landscaping and golf courses they are straining the environment’s ability to meet the demand for water in drought times like this. Where we have been, water seems to be plentiful and good. It is coming from an aquifer but I’ve seen a couple of very low lakes.

While we were in the Palm Springs area we visited Joshua Tree National Park, took a tram ride to the top of a mountain at San Jacinto State Park, where we hiked around for some amazing views of the Coachella Valley and took a drive around the Salton Sea stopping at the State Park to learn about this lake’s history. Turns out that back in 1905 a couple of engineers got greedy and wanted more water in their irrigation canal from the Colorado River so they went south of the border and cut another branch into the river to connect to their canal. The Colorado River saw this as an opportunity to change course so when it was at flood stage it cut a new course for itself into the Salton valley which is 300 feet below sea level. It took the engineers 16 months to correct their mistake and get the river back where they thought it should go. In the meantime, the lake was formed. I’m sure that was terribly disruptive to the Indians, salt miners and farmers in the area but the lake became a center for recreation for people from the cities to the west and by the 1950’s there were boaters, water skiers, and excellent fishing. Unfortunately the lake has no source of regular fresh water except for runoff from the farms which also contains pesticides. The salt level continues to rise as the lake loses volume to evaporation. Now there is only one variety of fish that can tolerate the salt level which is higher than the Pacific. We were there on a Sunday afternoon and saw no one out enjoying the lake though like every day since we’ve been here, it was a warm sunny day.  The State of California passed legislation to save the lake but did not allocate any funds. Since the water is unusable and saving the lake would be a huge expense it seems pretty clear that sometime in the future they will be able to mine for salt here again. It goes to show that there wasn’t supposed to be a lake there to begin with and I’m not sure that the Colorado has the gumption any more to change course by the time it gets to Mexico.

On April 7, we moved farther south to Jojoba (hoh-hoh-bah) Hills SKP RV Resort near Aguanga, CA. (about 60 miles north of San Diego and 70 miles south of Palm Springs). We’ll stick around here until April 22 and then have plans to spend a couple of days boondocking at a Harvest Host site, Faulkner’s winery just down the road before we start to move north. FYI: the jojoba is a bush that makes nuts from which a curative oil is extracted. The other day we drove the winding mountain road up to Mt. Palomar Observatory to check it out.  On the way back we stopped at an old Spanish mission (San Antonio de Pala). Since I read Isabelle Allende’s novel, Zorro, I’ve wanted to visit one of these missions and think about the integral part the Padres played in California history. What audacity to think that their way of life was so superior to the people who were here first and think that changing their way of life was good for them.

The next day we went over to Temecula, CA and checked out the winery where we plan to stay. It was Sunday and this town is close enough for people from LA and San Diego to make a day trip for lunch in Old Town or do a wine tasting tour. Hard to believe that as recently as 50 years ago, this was just a dusty little outpost surrounded by a huge cattle ranch.

Next week I plan to take a break from this endless vacation and go back to Minneapolis for a taste of reality… maybe some rain and play with Edie for a few days.

Things haven’t all been peachy for me. At some point, I realized that drinking ½ a bottle of wine every day was taking a toll on my sleeping and my mood so I decided that for now I will abstain from drinking any wine. Of course like all people who enjoy alcohol, I believe that I can go back to stopping at one glass and not every day. Time will tell on that.

We learned about Harvest Hosts, the organization that I mentioned earlier while we were at the Escapade in Tucson. We decided to join Harvest Hosts at that time. They have made arrangements with wineries and farms all over the country to allow members to boondock at their place for free. Of course the expectation is that the RVers will purchase a bottle of wine or eat in their restaurant. That shouldn’t be too difficult. As we go through Napa Valley in a few weeks, we plan to take advantage of more opportunities. If it turns out that I can’t drink the wine, by the time I get to your house I may have a nice stock of quality wine to share with you.