Day 67: Joshua Tree Forest

We walked half way to Quail Spring through the Joshua tree forest.  The path was sandy and heavy like a beach and hard to follow because it kept branching.  Antonia marked our route with a branch so we wouldn't get lost on the way back.

We found a horned lizard which was pretty cool.

Day 66: Forty-nine Palms Oasis in Joshua Tree

As soon as you drive into the National Park you get fabulously maintained roads running through pristine wilderness.  From the top of the ridge we climbed over today, we could look out of the park into the settled valley.

On the other side of the ridge, it's easy to spot the oasis against the backdrop of desert.  The plant life in this part of the desert couldn't be more different than it was in Hidden Valley.

It was pleasant to hang out at the oasis.  Antonia wrote an essay in her junior ranger book that turned out almost like a poem, and I took a family portrait.

Antonia's desert:

Pretend you are a lizard sitting on a rock.
What do you see?
I see lots of palm trees with burned black trunks,
I see mountains with lots of different shaped rocks on them,
I see a valley between two mountains.
What do you hear?
I hear bees and flies buzzing around,
I hear birds chirping and squawking,
I hear the faint wind blow through the palm leaves.
What do you feel?
I feel the jagged rock I'm sitting on,
I feel a cool breeze that is blowing my hair,
I feel flies bump into me.

On our way out, we ran into a military man bushwhacking through the park with a rottweiler who's "only agressive when people try to pick fights with me" (!)  So, we learned that the military being trained out here would rather be somewhere else, that even though he thinks he has a good attitude to the place, he can't imagine why we would be here voluntarily, and that the US military don't look kindly on people with any kind of contact with other countries or people in other countries (but we knew that already).

Day 65: Hidden Valley in Joshua Tree

Since this is a working trip and everyone has to put in several hours per day, we plan to do short hikes, starting in the late afternoon and continuing till sunset.  That also means we get the cooler evening weather, and the warmer light for photography.

Hidden Valley is completely enclosed by tall boulders, and has its own microclimate which protects pinyon pines and scrub oak.  The valley is so hidden that it may have been used by cattle rustlers, before a legitimate rancher Bill Keys blasted a hole into it so he could keep his cattle there.  The Hidden Valley nature trail is easy and beautiful.  In theory, it is the wrong time of year to see the 'desert in bloom', but there are plenty of more discreet flowers at the moment.

Day 64: The Desert

We have only been in the desert about half a day and already we have seen roadrunners, humming birds, a rattlesnake, an unidentified snake, rabbits, hares, squirrels and a tiny white fluffy rodent.  Also lots of Joshua trees. I had expected it to be impossibly hot here in the middle of the day, but that's not the case.  It's warm in the sun and cool in the shade, and there's a strong breeze blowing all the time. The sun is bright enough that I need sunglasses by 9.00 am however.  It's blissfully dry and silent. 

We arrived in our new temporary home quite late and had to just dump our bags and rush out to find a food store so we were quite exhausted. For now, all I'll say is that it's very nice here.  I'm looking forward to getting to know the place.

Day 63: La Brea tar pits

Fake Columbian Mammoth raft that sways too and forth in the breeze.

We took a quick trip to the world's greatest deposit of tar-soaked ancient mammal fossils, and were quite surprised to see and smell tar still bubbling up in the middle of Los Angeles.  Having got up at 4:30 am California time, we were a bit too tired to fully appreciate it.

Days 61 to 63: Amtrak from Chicago to Los Angeles

I rather liked riding through the farm country of Illinois and Missouri.  There were more trees than I'd been led to expect, but still as sense of openness with lots of fields. It looked almost European, but without the dense dense network of civilization that knits Europe together.  Antonia and I spent the late afternoon in the lounge car working through lesson books.  The train lurches a lot more than any I've been on, which makes neat writing and drawing harder than expected.  It even means that quite a few people nearly fell into us.

Dinner in the restaurant car was included with sleeper accommodations so we ate in very pleasant surroundings a meal of reasonable quality.  By then I was wondering exactly where we were.  Fortunately, we now have both a GPS and a Michelin road atlas for the states so I can follow our route.  (We preferred the Michelin atlas over the American version for one reason.  The American one goes state by state in alphabetical order.  The Michelin is continuous geographically.  Its one omission is the train track, which would be unthinkable in Europe.)  Each train carriage has one family room which takes up the whole width of the train.  Although it is still cosy, it is designed for families with more than one child, so it works well for us.  The trains have showers which I thought we would have to queue hours for, but I discovered there is not much competition for them.  The novelty of showering on a train seized Antonia's imagination, so for once she is enthusiastic about her ablutions.

We fell asleep at the north-eastern corner of Kansas and woke up at the south-western corner.  Here it is flat and dry and barren as expected.  There isn't a tree big enough to climb in and the grass, if it is grass, is brown.  Throughout the day, we rode through a dozen different kinds of desert, many of which we expect to explore in more detail later.   In places there was nothing higher than a covering of lichen as far as the eye could see  Little widmills raise water to troughs around which cattle gather like flies to jam.  I kept an eye on the vegetation, counting species and looking out for signs of humid zones, as though one day I might need it.  The settlements (I can't call them anything more promising) are of breathtaking delapidation. Surely, the conceit of the Americans that they are a privileged nation is due to the fact that they don't travel much.  In the lounge car, they find the living conditions of their poorer compatriots in their shanty towns to be an occasion for loud amazement and photography.  As we get closer to Albuquerque in New Mexico conditions change, and there are a few adobe mansions mixed in with the rundown trailers and huts.  Large or small, adobe is certainly the classy and comfortable option around here.

In the lounge car and the dining car its interesting to listen to the conversation of the Americans.  Self-appointed alpha males brag and bully at the tops of their voices about anything that attracts their attention: cattle, birds, the dining car menu, or a child trying to mind her own business.  Next to me, two women talked 'church' by the hour, without a single reference to religion. (I mean that church appeared to be a purely social and business phenomenon to them). I got to hear a few life stories.


The next day we had breakfast at 5.00 am Pacific Time, which left us pretty much wiped out for the rest of the day.  We were joined by a large party of British tourists who were doing a tour of the American South West by train and coach.  They had also found America unexpectedly rundown - the only thing I can say is that this seems to precede the recession.  I think all Europeans ought to travel to the US so we can really understand what fate we need to avoid.

Day 60 and 61: Zombies in Chicago

 America's cathedrals to capitalism

We arrived in Chicago exhausted from getting to bed at about 1am, then waking up early in the morning to see what Indiana looked like and eat train breakfasts.  None of us had more than five hours sleep.  Our hotel turned out to be well placed for us, at the bottom end of Grant Park,  The result is that we enjoyed a very nice, 6 mile walk (well, lurch, really) through park, along lakeshore, Magnificent Mile, riverfront, ... really, most of Chicago. 

Going the other way from our hotel are a bunch of museums for which we have a pass.  Antonia and I spent a couple of hours at the Field museum.  Like many natural history museums it has a dinosaur fossil gallery, but this one was incorporated into a whole exhibition on the history of life, and some processes of evolution.  That was cool, because it gave some context to the dinosaurs and allowed the museum to present a greater range of fossils than usual.

 Just like an aquarium, but of precambrian life

 This dinosaur seems to have a sternum running all the way to its pelvis with separate riblets. 

I never saw that before.