From Needles, we got back on Route 66 to finish driving the last stretch of the old road. The road here was bumpier and more desolate than any yet. We passed through a few towns, but aside from the pavement, there was nothing left of the old route to be seen. In Amboy, we saw a tree beside the road covered in shoes and a few odd pair of underwear. I don't know the story behind this, but there have been two other of these along 66, though this was the first we had seen. Amboy also had another inactive volcano crater, something else we've started seeing a lot of.
Right outside of town, we took a fifty-mile detour to Joshua Tree National Park, where the Mojave and Colorado Deserts converge. My dad wasn't too happy about spending this much time going away from the old road, but once we were there he was glad we did it. For me, the National Parks, Monuments, Forests, etc. have been the most rewarding part of the trip, and I only wish there was more time to spend in places like this. For him, it's the man-made; for me it's the natural.
Joshua Trees are about one of the most strange looking plants I've ever seen. My dad explains them as looking like a cross between a palm and a cactus, but they are actually a species of yucca. Their bark is shaggy like fur, and the tree can grow over 4o feet tall, at the rate of one inch per year. There were Joshua Trees most everywhere, and my dad kept asking me if I wanted to dig one up to throw in the back of the motorhome. (He is, in fact, trying to find out if he can get one to grow back at home.) But the most interesting part of the park were the rocks. Again, my dad had a pretty accurate description: "It looks like God took a giant dump out here." The giant rock piles came from volcanic activity eons ago, when molten monzogranite rose from deep within the Earth. As it rose, "it intruded the overlying rock, the Pinto gneiss formation," to create create these strange looking formations (park brochure). As the granite cooled and crystalized, cracks in the rocks were formed, which is what gives them the appearance of being stacked.
We found an expansive overlook about a mile off the main road, at en elevation of 5,185 feet, where we could see valley, mountains, and desert. The view included the San Andreas Fault, the Salton Sea (235 feet below sea level), Palm Springs, and nearly the Mexico border. The wind here was severe, so much so that we had to brace ourselves against the fence to not get blown over. It did make walking up the mountain easier, though, since the wind was behind us and pushing us forward.
Point of Interest...
The park had several oases, which are actually set atop a crack in the earth's crust at geological fault lines. When groundwater hits a fault plane, it rises to the surface and creates conditions for an oasis.
After leaving the park, it was back to 66. We picked it up again in Barstow and went through a string of towns, all devoid of their Route 66 history. Even though the towns further east were either small specks on the road or filled with modern-day chains, most of them still had a trace of 66, whether from their old neon, ramshackle filling stations, or roadside attractions. But since we'd left Vegas, any signs of the road had been few and far between. Very few and very far between. So aside from Joshua Tree, our sites for the day included McDonald's, Auto Zone, Wal-Mart, car dealerships, and things of the sort. Think Concord. The only difference was that sometimes there was a mountain as a backdrop.
We were supposed to go all the way to Santa Monica, to the final point on Route 66, then the next day we were going to cut south to San Diego, and then back up again to drive the entire California coast. But since I spent my ride that day trying to schedule out the stops on the rest of the trip, we realized we were going to have to push harder than we thought to get to Vancouver and Victoria before needing to turn for home. The time in Las Vegas had cost us. So my dad finally gave in and gave up some of the route. I don't know if I finally convinced him that it was futile or if he just couldn't take my complaints any longer. I felt like we were giving up so much just to see pavement and fast food joints and that a decision needed to be made - if we were going to get home in less than three months, something had to be cut. So as the sun was setting, he made a decision to turn south and go on toward San Diego.
We made it into the city about 8:30PM. It was our longest day of driving since we had left home. We were tired and cranky, but dinner still had to be cooked. Rocinante still had to be readied for the night. And since we had arrived a day before we had scheduled, we didn't know what we were going to spend the next day doing in San Diego.
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