4. Trees -Joshua to Sequoia

As we leave Barstow (I keep thinking of Stan), we decide we’re not going out through the most salubrious area.   At a set of lights we notice a Wedding Chapel to our right which looked like an ordinary shop but it also offered flowers, hire of wedding dress and hire of tuxedo.  On the corner opposite stood the Domestic Violence Center right next door to the Pay-Day loan shop.  All on Route 66 again. 

After what seems like another light-year or so of driving we check into our hotel in Twenty-Nine Palms, a town mostly one block deep but spread along about 10 miles of the interstate just to the north of Joshua Tree National Park.  We have one of the cabins which are painted in bright colours which of course get even more vibrant in the harsh sunshine.  Ours is mauve and pink and it looks surprisingly ‘right’ in this location.   Chatting to the receptionist she asked where we’re from and when I said originally London she asked where.  Bow I said, “ah I spent two years living in Stepney” was the response.  Bow is the next borough to Stepney for those who don’t know London.   She was there in the eighties when the diaspora Stepneyites would return on Saturday nights for a sing-song in what used to be their local pub, or at least that’s what she was told.

I know Joshua Tree from the story of Gram Parsons body being taken from the mortuary illegally by a friend and cremated in Joshua Tree as per the late Gram’s wishes.  Other younger readers may know of the U2 album of the same name.  The band and their egotisical gobshite of a singer stayed in a motel on the main drag here.

Joshua Tree is also hot being in the high eighties but compared to Death Valley it was almost temperate.  Lots of worn rounded and split granite boulders here with the spiky and multi-branched Joshua Trees (a very large Yucca up to about 30 feet high) dotted amongst them.  I think they’re quite jolly things.  A wonderfully scenic landscape and I have many a photo to prove it.   On the first morning we were off an hour before dawn again to get to a high vantage point for dawn’s rosy fingers etc. etc.  There was only one other couple at the viewpoint who must have been fed up when we arrived.  Well it all went according to plan; the sun came up.  To the south was the valley with Palm Springs in it and looking across the valley a little below us we could see a straight horizontal line cutting across, clear above and hazy below.  This was the smog line below which was the pollution blowing in from the west (Los Angeles basically) and piling up against the rising valley walls.  Nice.  We saw this again approaching LA when we saw, somewhat ironically, the hundreds and hundreds of wind turbines looming out of the smog.

It’s been a surprise to see how early dinner is eaten here with most restaurants serving for the evening by 5.00 and closing by 9.00.  One we went into was 4.00 to 8.30 for dinner.   We’ve learnt to share a portion regularly, even a sandwich because they always come with additions, french fries perhaps, potato chips (crisps) or some pickle and of course there is always more filling than bread unlike our pathetic little things.  Small means big, medium means bigger, large means ridiculous but is clearly no problem to those on the easily adhered to Calorie Uncontrolled Diet.  Waiters and waitresses are servers and they and hotel receptionists are generally much older than we would expect in the UK.  Many look like pensioners doing an extra job and maybe that’s what they’re doing.  Tipping is expected everywhere and at minimum 15% and even an ice-cream stand will have a box for tips.  Still at least the language isn’t a problem and most of the time we can make ourselves understood, although jokes are usually a step too far.  I made the mistake of saying in one restaurant “well if you haven’t got any beer, I’ll have a Budweiser” and it just wasn’t understood at all.

Between Joshua Tree and the Sequoia National Park which was another long day of driving, we see lots of trains – big trains.  They tend to have multiple locomotives and many wagons, each the length of a shipping container with two containers on top of each other per wagon.  At one road crossing I counted one train with four locomotives and 86 wagons which took 1 minute and 45 seconds to roll past us.  There are a few passenger trains too with double deck carriages. 

We took an overnight stop on this journey at a small town which turned out to be very pleasant.  A good Italian Restaurant and for dessert the local family run ice cream shop using milk and cream from their own farm.  I asked the man in front what flavour he had chosen because none were labelled and he told me the whole story about the business.  Then he insisted on buying mine for me, a very pleasant surprise and an illustration of the friendliness and generosity of many Americans.  It was what I thought expensive at $5.50 (£4) a scoop but then I saw the size.  One scoop equalled one pint of ice-cream.  I was nearly sick three times before I managed to finish it an hour or so later.  I mentioned early eating, well the town was virtually deserted as we walked to the ice cream place at about 7.45 and this was a Saturday night.

We drove through Buelton which I’m sure you all know is “the home of split-pea soup”, almost as good as one we once drove through in Texas which claimed to be the Mosquito Capital of the World and which every year had a mosquito festival.  Things get darned excitin’ here sometimes and as the marketing people say “if you’ve got a fault, feature it”.

Our journey to Sequoia and King’s Canyon National Parks was to see the biggest trees in the world.  Not the tallest, that honour goes to the Coastal Redwoods, these were the Giant Sequoias which have a greater mass.  These parks are to the west of the Sierra Nevada, the second chain running parallel to the coast.  We’d been down the rain-shadowed eastern side when we left Yosemite and gone to Death Valley.  So we either back tracked or came up from the south knowing that we had to go back in the same direction to hit the coast just north of Los Angeles in a few days.  So we came up from the south.

These trees are bigger than you can imagine.  The biggest is called General Sherman, it’s about 2700 years old and stands 275 feet high, think of it as not far short of 100 yards, upwards.  Quite stumpy though when compared to the 380 feet of the tallest Redwood.  The General Sherman weighs about 1500 tons and the circumference around the base is 102 feet which would need about 20 people holding hands to get around it.  The trunks are very even in girth being almost the same 20 feet up and 150 feet up and the bark, which can be up to 3 feet thick doesn’t burn well which is why the trees have survived the regular fires.  All the older ones have fire scars on the trunks. The seeds only germinate after fire and may sit on the forest floor for 20 years or more before germinating.  A fire goes through, the cone opens and the seeds have bare soil (no competition) and ash for fertiliser.   Standing in a grove of these leviathans (show off word for ‘big chaps’) is a reverential sort of experience and the other (few) people we meet walking through greet us in whispers.  These towering pillars with some leafy branches perhaps 200 feet up, the light filtering through, the silence, the seeming agelessness.  It is like being in a cathedral but of course in reality being in a cathedral is like being in a ancient forest (I don’t claim this as my idea).  Surely the design of a cathedral is based on the grandeur of the ancient forests. 

It’s easy to assume that this cool air at about 6,000 feet is wonderfully fresh but it’s downwind of one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world, the San Joaquin Valley.  This whole central Californian plain produces between a third and a half of all of the USA’s fruit and vegetables.  As we look westwards from the Giant Sequoia Forest across the San Joaquim Valley though, we can see the smog and pollution.  The National Park Ranger Info. Centre has a daily air monitor chart on the wall and on the day we left the park the air quality was “Unhealthy for Some Groups”.   According to the US National Park Service website the four counties adjacent to Sequoia NP had 37,000 tons of pesticide used on them in 2010 alone.  The volaticised pesticides plus the drift from Los Angeles is what causes the problem.

As we were leaving I got chatting to a biker on a Harley-Davidson about whether it was tiring on the switchback roads leading up to the park.  It isn’t apparently but the cold, wind and rain do cause him problems.  He’s on a six month tour, just him and the Hog, taking a break from oil field work in northern Montana or thereabouts and travelling all over the States.  He’d worked seven days weeks for 9 months to get the time off but at least he was enjoying the trip.   

I should have mentioned that the Sequoia Park also has what they call Active Bears and Active Bear Areas so I always have a number of cunnin’ plans that even Baldrick would be proud of.  However, I like the advice signs that say “if attacked by a bear, fight back”.  I presume this is to confirm to any attackee the pointlessness of trying to open negotiations.