Mostly Plants

From my hardcopy trail journal. Some of the first paragraph overlaps in content with the last post, but it moves on from there.

Monday, 3/17/2008 11:00 AM
The Sonoran Desert

Yesterday was angrily, bitterly cold. We spent Saturday night huddling over our campfire. Temperatures sank to around freezing, and the cold front that came through during the night dropped small hail on us. By the time we went to bed I was wearing my long underwear, the pants of awesomeness, and khakis on top; I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, fleece, parka, and sheep. Still chilly, but the two-buck chuck helped. Our savior was a local man who came in his pickup and sold us a shit tonne of wood for $8.

Ginger and Laura both slept poorly and coldly. In the morning I built up the fire (from the one remaining hot coal), and we had bacon, Irish Coffee, and oats boiled with milk, butter, dried fruit and brown sugar. Very tasty. You know you’re Irish when you’ve got more Irish than coffee in your Irish Coffee, and it’s only breakfast. Happy Saint Patrick’s! Then we bugged out and spent most of the day driving to Cottonwood Camp in the south–about ten degrees warmer. We stopped at the cholla garden and Ocatillo patch to look at cacti. At the Cholla garden was a sign that said “don’t touch the Chollas; even the slightest touch with embed a barbed spine in your flesh.” So of course Ginger had to go and molest a cactus–and it didn’t molest her back!

The obligatory cactus portraits:

I didn’t get Ginger and Mel. I’m sure somebody else did.

Lunch @ cottonwood was pitas with hummus, cheese, salami, and choco-covered fruit. We also stopped at Jumbo Rocks on the way down–they looked like good climbing or building, but the cold was a real killjoy, and we got back on the road fast.

In the afternoon we did a two-hour loop hike to Mastodon Peak, passing by two fan-palm oases–cotton spring and cottonwood spring (no really–there’s another one nearby called wood spring!) The California Fan Palm and other tropical and temperate vegetation gathers around tiny seeps and springs. Suddenly you see hummingbirds, cottonwoods, and other unlikely desert inhabitants. The fan palms collect all of their old, dead leaves, which lead to spectacular conflagrations that periodically purge the oasis of all other life and fertilize the soil for more fan palms.

At Mastodon Peak we could see out over large areas of desert, as well as the Salton Sea.

In the evening, Ginger and I went to the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, the largest US Marine Corps base (by land area), where her friend Aaron is stationed for a few months for the Marine Corps Communications Electronics School. On the way up it was warm enough for us to drive with the top down, until we began the climb into the High Desert. When we arrived, we parked under a sign that said “ONE LAST REMINDER: DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE. FASTEN SAFETY BELT. USE O.R.M.” Aaron told us that ORM is “operational risk management,” which is military for “don’t be stupid in a way that gets you dead.” I suppose it makes sense that the military would have a term of art for that. Aaron showed us around the base, which provides entertainment for the troops in the form of a one-screen cinema, bar, and bowling alley. They have an Enterprise Rent-a-Car, but Aaron says that they only use it to go and drink in town. The first tank battalion is headquartered at 29 Palms, and we got to see the tank barn. There was a “tank xing” sign by the road–precious!

After we got hassled by the Gunnery Sergeant for being unregistered civilians, we went back to camp, stopping at Wal*Mart in Yucca Valley for Ginger to get warm clothes. Night was much warmer but very windy.