Super Bloom, 2019: Day 2

Sniff, sniff
Jingle, jangle
Sniff

Huh?  What the?  Oh, hi, Dog.  It's morning.  You're antsy.  I'll get up, but don't get too excited yet.  I still need to fumble around in the dark to find my clothes and if you're lucky, I'll be able to keep my balance while putting them on.

By the time Dad returns with a freshly relieved Dog, Child and Mom are up and getting dressed, much to Dad's surprise.  In less time than is usual for this family, things are packed, in the car and ready for departure.  After a stop for coffee and a light breakfast (complimentary hotel breakfasts are not to be trusted), the drive to Salvation Mountain commences.

Child had a similar reaction to seeing the Salton Sea as she did to San Gorgonio Pass wind farm.  After years of training, she was able to articulate hesitance.  "I wanna go swimming in there, but I can't because of bird AIDS."  While not biologically a thing, Mom uses "bird AIDS" as an excuse not to trust anything that has been contaminated, something the Salton Sea most definitely is.  Mom relayed what she had discovered in her documentary-watching during the drive.

For reasons explained in the Salton Sea sidebar, the drive to Salvation Mountain is a bleak one.  The landscape is desolate, ruins abound, the smell of alkali dust occasionally roils with rotting fish and the sun beats down mercilessly.  This is, in fact, the perfect transition to Salvation Mountain, a place too bizarre to be placed physically closer to population centers.  The environs wipe your mind clean of any heady expectations of an existence built up from the refineries of comfort.  When all you see is air, dirt and water with some asphalt and an occasional concrete something or other sparsely mixed in, you are staring survival in the face and you know that everything you encounter has been staring much longer.  Thrusting yourself into the arms of something bigger is the only way to counter the never-ending downward draft of basic survival.

Salvation Mountain, front

One man thrust himself so devotedly, he created Salvation Mountain.  Religion isn't big amongst us travelers, but it is the principal force behind this place.  That we can enjoy its splendor and its particular sensibilities should be testament to what a wonderful creation it is.  We were not particularly big fans of The Flintstones, but we were able to enjoy Bedrock City.  Similarly, Salvation Mountain entertained and inspired--and with more fellow visitors.  The aesthetic is similar, bright colors, hand-crafted clay/adobe/plaster, seemingly aimless arrangements of things too fantastic to be real.  Salvation Mountain is what Hundertwasser might have made had he let the American desert strip what was left of his pretension away and he had no funds with which to buy supplies.  Just like the Flintstones camp site, this was a playground for Child and Mom alike, wandering the yellow brick road (not actually made of brick).  Dog made many friends as well.

Salvation Mountain, innards

Though Salvation Mountain is a fully-formed and developed monument unto itself, it was also a seed.  The harsh desert forges survivors.  Even the symbiotic and parasitic survivors need the stout individuals that can mix their environment and the meagerest of supplies into a living.  When some of these saw Salvation Mountain, they realized a community could be created.  Though Slab City had already existed, a new element was drawn to it now, one that founded the only art museum in all of Imperial County.  This place is called East Jesus.  A rotating cast of artists arrives, creates what comes to mind from the junk lying around them and puts it on display.

East Jesus. Something about media, I think.

This was yet another playground for Child and Mom.  Child craves nothing more than things she's never seen before.  Mom craves nothing more than the dystopian dysfunction of society's relationship with stuff manifest itself in mocking reflection, artists using the throwaways of consumption to vividly illustrate just how much gets thrown away.  All manners of scrap metal, vacuum hoses, disembodied doll heads, decapitated doll bodies, plastic bottles, immobile vehicles, vehicle parts, mobile vehicles, electronic parts, full televisions and anything else that might find its way to a dump is far from put back together again.  Instead, it is reimagined and manifested in an art form Child calls Junkee.

East Jesus. Don't think of an elephant.

The confluence of zombies, libertarians and artists in this particular stretch of desert eventually had to be left.  We still had to get to and through Anza-Borrego.  The plan was still to make it back to L.A. before sleep time.  On our way out of town, an Army caravan was going the opposite direction.  Slab City had been founded around an abandoned military base.  Perhaps it was time for reclamation.  One could never tell.  We had one last brush with authorities.  Our proximity to the Mexican border meant that we passed by one border checkpoint on the way to Salvation Mountain.  Another one awaited us on our way to Anza-Borrego.  We turned immediately after the checkpoint onto a desolate highway that would take us to our destination.

East Jesus. Art car adorned with doll parts.

Super blooms fatten the base of the food chain and the effects ripple up.  With more pollen comes more consumers of pollen.  Often this means bees, but in the case of southeast California, it means painted lady butterflies.  The unfortunate consequence of this abundance is that driving more than about 30 mph leads to butterflies on the windshield and grill of the car.  Dad maintained this speed, much to the chagrin of the drivers behind him, who were all too eager to get to the off-road vehicular recreation centers.  Even so, it was impossible to avoid all splats.

Painted lady butterfly. Not my photo.

It was clear as we passed the destinations on the super bloom maps passed out by the state park officials that the super bloom itself had passed.  There were large areas of green that took a light yellow or purple shading.  However, we had missed the main event.  Even some of the hillsides within the confines of Los Angeles had been more colorful with flowers than what we saw.  There was immense consolation that we were in a state park, a place that had been deemed naturally beautiful enough to be set aside by the state long before the word "superbloom" had been used.

Smattering of yellow and purple, but we clearly missed the "super" part of the bloom.

After enjoying the mountainous views of ocotillo-spotted valleys from our vehicle for some time, we turned out to take a few pictures.  By sheer, dumb luck, the turn-out was a trailhead (Bill Kenyon Trail, specifically).  Child and Dad commenced to hiking as Mom tended Dog in the vehicle.  Why dogs were not allowed on the trail was not hard to guess.  Dad tried to explain to Child that many who take the initiative to visit state parks do not respect leash laws and probably don't pick up after their canines, an explanation Child questioned relentlessly while hiking towards a ridge.  Once it was clear that the trail was taking us there, it became a point of anticipation.  When we came up over the ridge of the trail, Child said, "Wow, we can see all of America from here."

🎶Here on the range I belong🎶

A couple hours of hiking were rejuvenating for Child and Dad.  When we got back on the road, we decided to head to Julian, a mountain town with strong tourism driven by people's need to experience quaint.  Mom had visited a few times in her youth, but hadn't for some time.  It was on the way home and would be a good place for those who didn't get to attend to nature's call in nature.

When we arrived in Julian, Mom was relieved that not a whole lot had changed.  Most lodging is in the form of bed and breakfasts, the block of town where the apple pies were hadn't really modernized and almost everything closes at 5 pm.  We wandered into a well--well, a shop that had a well in it anyway.  Here, the proprietor, Lisa, informed us of the early closing times for most of the town and directed us to Heroes for food.  We could not have been more pleasantly surprised.  It's not often a restaurant with a military and law enforcement theme (they're "heroes," get it?) even knows what "vegan" means.  Not only did Heroes have a vegan burger, they had a soup that they took the initiative to inform us was vegan as well.  Both were excellent.  We were again pleasantly surprised when we stopped in to ask about vegan apple pie.  There was an entire set of vegan offerings of pie, not just apple; but we ordered apple anyway and relished in having it served warm to us.

Mom and Dad both noticed someone pan-handling.  She would not have been recognized as a pan-handler in L.A., clothes and body too clean and hair only slightly wild.  However, she did ask people for change.  As Mom and Child entered a shop with a candy mine in it, another person on the corner shouted, "Yeah! and Megadeth too.  I got 'em all!"  While Child was inside mining for candy, Dad got to hear more.  "Hiiii, Tom!"

"Hey! How you feeling?  You're looking good!"

"I'm just waitin' for my sister, you know, the usual." Before Mom and Child returned from the mine, the pan-handler and the corner shouter got together and strolled off on the 78/79.  Shortly after, Mom and Child emerged.  We all hopped back in the car and headed for home.

On the drive back, mountainous woods gave way to wetlands with cows grazing, which in turn gave way to intensively farmed lemon orchards with fruit stands along the street.  We promised that we would make time some other time to procure cheap, fresh produce by the bushel to haul home.  As it was, we had to beat exhaustion in the hours of driving ahead.  And we spent the next morning planning our next road trip to southeast CA.