The Last Road Trip - Part 3

Tuesday, March 19     Carrizo Plain, California

Yesterday I got going from Echo Bay relatively early, spending most of my time on Interstate 15 trying to get farther west.  The morning drive through the Mojave was gorgeous, as always.  Long shadows on volcanic ridges.  Isolated outcroppings of red Aztec Sandstone, and all around me the fractured, torn landscape of ancient mountains and sea beds.

I was able to skirt around Las Vegas by hugging those mountains, more or less.  But I still had to endure the long drive to Barstow, California where I took a motel room for the night.  A chance to chill out a bit, wash up, and catch up.

The payoff is that now I am sitting in my campsite at the Carrizo Plain, looking out over vast open space covered in green grass with yellow swatches of spring color everywhere.  Groupings of goldfields that look like they were splotched on by an Impressionist painter.  And endless fields of fiddleneck, punctuated here and there by purple phacelia or an occasional California poppy.  In the background….the familiar hooting of a pair of Great Horned Owls.  They nest here in the small grove of eucalyptus trees that were likely planted many years ago when this place was a working ranch.  They are now just about the only trees in this valley.  They don’t call it the Carrizo Plain for nothing.

Once I bagged a campsite, of the last ones left, I spent the remainder of the afternoon driving the Soda Lake Road and stopping frequently to photograph flowers.  At one point, I headed up toward the Caliente Range where I could explore a prominent outcrop of rock, sticking up like a stegosaurus spine on the western edge of the plain.  The rocks are covered with multicolored lichen, and pockmarked with numerous holes and cavities.  The larger ones are obviously nesting areas, their bottom edges whte with bird shit.  I found several large potholes filled by the recent rains and surrounded by tiny white flowers and orange poppies.  Nearby were several rounded grinding holes, no doubt created and left by ancient Chumash Indians who were native 

to this place.  On the way back to the main road, I passed a peregrine falcon on the ground holding its prey.  It took off as soon as I drove by.

The emptiness and space here are staggering.  Intimidating.  Lonely.  Exhilarating.  The San Andreas Fault runs through the Temblor Range to the east and has torn through the hills, leaving bare ragged patches amid the lime colored slopes.   Many of those slopes now sporting lemon yellow smears of wildflowers.  The valley floor is flat and wide and dotted with remnants of old homesteads.  Weathered water tanks and rusted farm machinery.  Old shacks sagging into the earth.

Low gray clouds have moved in.  The wind is picking up.  And rain is imminent.  If the skies were clear, I could look forward to a full moon rising tonight over the Temblors and marking the first official day of spring.  I’ve got my tripod set up just in case there is a break in the clouds.  Otherwise I continue to sit and just stare across the vastness, glad to be here once again on native California soil in a place lost in time.