April 22, 1998

Some adventures from Badwater to I-80

Though I'm a born Californian, and I've seen my native state from Weed to San Diego, Mount Shasta to Knott's Berry Farm, I had never until Easter 1998 been to Death Valley.

It was unplanned and rather spontaneous. I heard El Nino had brought a great growth of wildflowers, we had four days to rub together, so I said "let's go" to Lydia. We packed and went. With stops at Casa de Fruta and Kettleman City, (the last a concentrated essence of chain franchising perhaps without parallel in these United States) we discovered the Kern River canyon. What a magnificent gorge!

We stayed the first night at Lake Isabella, where two forks of the Kern River join. Next day we continued over Walker Pass, down into Inyokern where we discovered the Two Sister's Restaurant (food, prices and service all serendipitously excellent), past China Lake naval weapons center, Ridgecrest and the Pacific Salt and Chemical plant at Trona, over a 5000 foot pass and downhill into Death Valley at Stove Pipe Wells, elevation 5 feet, about the same as Nick's Rockaway restaurant. At various points in the high desert, we had seen scattered Joshua Trees, a few per acre.

After a meal stop at Furnace Creek Ranch, we dropped to an even lower spot at Badwater, where you can look up about 282 feet to the sea level sign.

Though thousands of acres of beautiful yellow flowers billowed in the wind, we may have missed much of the most colorful but ephemeral display by days or a week. Death Valley was worth the trip, and I highly recommend it, in April rather than August, of course.

Coming back a different route, U.S. Highway 395, traversing the eastern Sierra, we stopped at windblown Manzanar, where young Americans whose grandparents had emigrated from Japan must have admired the snowy, rugged background of the Sierra while shivering in the constant winds of the Owens Valley.

There isn't much left there except a couple of stone guardhouses and the ruins of what served as a community center. I was a pre-teen during those years of WWII, and I can only be grateful my parents, my immigrant grandparents and I weren't uprooted and forced to live in such a beautiful, windy, snowy desert. My grandparents were from the Azores and Italy, not Japan.

The museum at Independence featured memorabilia of Manzanar, including the 1946 newspaper clipping which told how the tarpaper barrack shacks inside the barbed wire compound were sold to veterans for $333.33 each. The most imposing building in the whole area belongs to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which has treated the local ranchers of the Owens Valley roughly the same way the Federal Government treated Japanese-Americans. Of course the locals are free to move to the coast, something the folks at Manzanar were not allowed to do.

Our last night was spent in Carson City, where we gambled 15 or 20 cents in the slot machines, enjoyed a very reasonably priced motel, and found five inches of snow on our car when we woke up. Nevada is a great place to visit, provided you don't gamble. Our immediate problem was to find tire chains in April, which we did on the fourth try. Wal Mart, K Mart and Grand Auto failed us, but a local Carson City auto parts store came through. Happily I-80 opened up and the chains remained in the box.

If you can deal with adventures and serendipity, I would recommend you duplicate my 1220 mile trip. Just avoid the snow.