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globe-trotters.chDana & Mathias on Tour |
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globe-trotters.chDana & Mathias on Tour |
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It is late evening by the time we cross the US border in Tecate. We did not apply for visa in Switzerland (the US ambassy in Bern did not have any appointments left when we intended to apply two month before we left Switzerland), so we enter under the visa waiver program. The US border officers are very friendly. We chat about the must-see places in the country and are even offered AAA maps for the first part of our journey.
We spend the night in Potrero. Next morning, we go hiking in the nearby state park.
There we get an invitation by a local to a home-made tea, thanks Bob! Refreshed, we spend a couple of hours in a library surfing on the Internet, then drive through the Mojave Desert towards the Joshua Tree National Park. Mojave Desert up to Joshua is visibly more arid than back in Baja California, with low flora variety. For a while, all that we can see is just another palo verde tree..
As we enter Joshua though, we are greeted by bunches of violet lupins, yellow brittle bushes, white creosote bushes, and red ocotillos and chuparoses.
We make base at Jumbo Rocks and hike for a day in the wind-swept backcountry. We walk through a complex landscape of hills, washes, bajadas, pediments, plutons, and faults, and climb granite monoliths of peculiar shapes planted here and there.
The granitic rocks we climb today were born out of a monzogranite mass that was liquid some hundred million years ago. This mass was cooling and crystalizing several miles underground under the layers of old dark formations of metamorphic rock called pinto gneiss. Less dense than the pinto gneiss, the monzogranite mass gradually rose toward the surface. During the crystalization, the mass contracted slightly, forming countless joints. Ground water transformed the crystals in the joints chemically into clay. Once exposed, the clay washed away, leaving open cracks between the boulders. Where the horizontal cracks prevailed, the above-ground erosion formed stacked-pancakes and loaf structures. Where the vertical cracks prevailed, the erosion shaped columns and spires. The hikers' paradise was born. In places, both the light colored granitic rocks and the one billion years old dark gneiss has been exposed for us to see.
The Mojave yuccas and hardy junipers found their home in the cracks between the rocks.
Climbing down to the next bajada, a sudden wildflower garden spreads in front of us.
We witness lizards, spiders,and butterflies working on future generations.
We spot other desert dwellers: black jackrabbit, roadrunners, kangoroo rats, golden eagles, loggerhead shrikes, and antelope ground squirrels. It is hard to believe that the defenseless looking roadrunners occasionally feed on rattlesnakes!
An extensive Joshua tree forest unfolds ahead. The Joshua tree, signature plant of the Mojave desert that gave the name to the national park, can assume an infinity of forms. A fork in the crown of the tree stops growing either when it gets attacked or when it gets blooms. When a limb gets discarded, Joshua tree starts growing a new fork. The crown can fork a hundred times, giving the tree a twisty face.
Apart from the large Joshua tree forests, there is something else in the park we have never seen before: big cholla colonies in which opuntia bigelovii species prevail. It is an unusual sight. From a distance, the top joints of the opuntia cacti are covered with silvery bristles, giving them a deceivingly cuddly, velvety appearance. There may be another reason why people call these cacti "teddy bear chollas". The bottom joints of the plants have a chocolate brown color and with a pinch of phantasy look like teddys.
Teddy bears usually produce sterile seeds. The reproduction is carried out via detached joints that quickly develop roots and grow into new individuals. Many times this reproductive process occurs at the base of the parent. But some joints hitchhike on desert animals, who unknowingly carry them great distances before they fall off, starting a new colony.
Chinese Ambassy, Japanese restaurants, and cosmopolitan traffic jams are on our agenda in the big American city with a Mexican name and a Mediterranean climate. We will also spend time visiting the Getty museum, shopping, and hiking in the Topanga State Park.
The first impression we get of LA is that.. this town is big. Not tall at all, but very spread out. We drive for hundred kilometers without leaving the city.
The second observation is that LA is in fact quite relaxed. Despite the millions who live here, the town does not feel cramped. The houses have wide basis and gardens, the parking in the city center costs nothing, the ten-line freeway gets heavy traffic but it moves. Few locals seem to mind spending an hour in the car driving to work, sipping their coffee from big steel cups, making the first business calls, and watching the surfers swimming in the waveless ocean. It is 9am, and Beverly Hills is still full of folks in working age jogging under the palms. Light ocean breeze tickles the nose, the sun shines, and most of the crowd seems to enjoy life.
Getting a visa at the Chinese Ambassy for a two month stay in the People's Republic is painless. No questions asked, just give us the form, passport, and pay the fee. Despite the efficiency, some Chinese customers start shouting angrily because they were told to stand in the line. It looks like China will be lively, we are looking forward to it (;)
We spend a couple of hours buying books. Then Mathias finds a replacement laptop. (The old one did not like coffee). We stock our "cave" with Californian wine. We also need some outdoor gear. The Adventure 16 on the Pico Avenue in Santa Monica has everything we need and more, together with a highly professional advice. Ask for Michelle, the Swedish girl. For big shopping, good customers also get the right price.
We drive up the twisty canyon of Malibu to the Topanga State Park. We get a permission from the ranger to stay overnight. We hike by flash light in company of a coyote pack and deer. The frogs are loud. We sleep extremely well.
Nice weather stays with us as we visit the Getty Museum, a private museum operated and financed by the richly endowed J.P. Getty Trust. The museum houses a carefully selected Pre-twentieth century European paintings, drawings, sculpture, decorative arts, and a less familiar but fascinating collection of illuminated manuscripts. These are the guys who inflate the prices of the pieces one would appreciate in his dining room (;) But then, a lot of effort is being made so that the collections are accessible to the large public. More recently, European and American photograph exhibitions have been added. Getty Center was designed by Richard Meier, the "ultimate voice of twentieth century modernism". Aluminum, steel, glass, Bagni de Tivoli travertine, fountains, greenery, and twelve years of work combined to use most of a billion dollar budget and create a unique environment to enjoy art.
From the terrace on the top floor, we look over the nice parts of LA and digest the impressions of a well spent day. We take the car pool line to drive out of the city towards Death Valley.
Satan owns a lot of real estate in the DV National Park. Devil's Corn Field, Hell's Gate and Furnace Creek are just a few places the early gold seekers had to pass following their vision of treasures before they hit the four thousand meters high mountains soaring above the lifeless Inferno plain. There was no issue. There was no way back either through the immense valley the aridity of which rivals that of Sahara, because there was only desert waiting beyond.
The valley was not always the symbol of otherworldly torture, quite to the contrary. As the glaciers retreated from Sierra Nevada Mountains at the end of the last ice age, Death Valley became a lake-filled bassin with abundant water and life. The ancestors of the modern Shoshone and Paiute made their homes on the verdant shores of the Lake Manly, fishing and growing crops. But the climate continued to warm and became arid. The Lake Manly evaporated, leaving the brilliant white salt deposits in the bassin.
Most of the flora and fauna disappeared. But amazingly, a few species adapted. Episodes of flooding fill the valley with water again and bring the dormant animals and left-over seeds back to life.
We are lucky enough that the Death Valley shows its friendly face when we explore it. The rumors that after torrential rains, there are flowers that have not been seen for hundred years are not exactly true. At the visitor center we learn that the valley used to get this kind of short relief every ten years on average. The cycle has shortened to seven years since the 80ies.
We see flowering nopals, desert paintbrush, scarlet locoweed, and desert gold.
We plunge under the sea level and smell the honey of golden carpet, panamint daisy, and other endemics.
The desert wildflowers have a particularly strong scent to attract pollinators in the shortest time to renew the species before the moisture evaporates.
In some places, the Death Valley looks like Alois Lichsteiner's painting.
At almost hundred meters below the sea level, Badwater is the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere. Fourty degrees Celsius slow us down as we walk on the sparkling salt crystals in the shallow temporary lake.
The heat of the mesmerising sauna climbs up the massive swell of the snow-capped Panamint range, every day higher. Some time in summer, the temperatures could reach up to 57 degrees Celsius.
In Salt Creek, we meet with the master of survival: The endemic Salt Creek Pupfish.
This tiny fish adapted to the extreme climatic changes and developped to the most heat and salt tolerant of all fishes. This fittest survivors since the ice ages tolerates water heat of over 40 degrees Celsius and salinity three times higher than sea water! Pupfish is very difficult to spot most times of the year. It is dormant throughout winter when the air temperatures occasionally fall below zero and it also goes to sleep in summer when the water dries up. In addition, the fish is afraid of large moving shapes. But in spring, it is all about the family. The males turn wonderful blue and fiercely compete for the most attractive females.
The offspring will live for an average of eight months and pass on their incredibly flexible genes over the next spring. There are other unique varieties of pupfish living in the park, namely Devil's Hole Pupfish, Cottonball Marsh Pupfish and Saratoga Spring Pupfish. Seamingly lifeless, Death Valley is a true laboratory of Darwin evolution.
We spend a day in the Nevadan desert reading about American pension plans, hedge funds, options, China's modern industry, and Dan Browns' "Angels and Demons".
We learn from BBC that the pope passed away. On the following day, we drive to Las Vegas.
The plastic city is busy with gambling, shopping, marriage-arranging, screaming from the roller coasters, waiting for the bland cheap food, and swimming in free, risk-inducing and wallet-loosening alcohol.
We have never been to Disneyland but it must have common features with Las Vegas. Between Cairo and Venice, we get stuck in a traffic jam and have more than enough time to admire struggling tropical palms, birds singing from the woofers, blond men driving a rosa cadillac, and predominantly kitchy architecture.
We park in an over-sized vehicle parking, stroll through Treasure Island, and enter a casino. Gaming machines blink from the immense dark hall. Absent looks stare at the screens, unsteady hands move the sticks and push the buttons. An anorexic woman with an old-fashioned hat, an oversized man with a colorful drink in his hand, a couple in their sixties plus. The murky businessmen at the poker table are dead serious. It does not look like fun. The odor is unbearably sweet. The bar tender administers some drugs through the customer's nose. I feel a bit dizzy. We walk out with the same amount of money on our credit card.
One in three people in the city is a Las Vegan. The locals tell us they do not understand why people come to Las Vegas, but it is good for the jobs. We spend some hours on the wireless Internet, buy supplies, spend the night at the nice Lake Mead, and look forward to Grand Canyon.
In Grand Canyon, a third of Earth's geological history lay exposed to the sun. The oldest rocks exposed at the bottom of the canyon, gneiss and schist, date back to 1.8 billion years ago. Seas, swamps, and rivers deposited a dozen layers of shales, mudstone, and limestone over the oldest rocks, before the whole structure, today known as the Colorado Plateau, was thrust upward from sea level to over three thousand meters over sea by a collision of tectonic plates.
The Grand Canyon itself has been carved by the rivers that combined to form the Colorado River over the past five million years.
We take a bird-eye view over the canyon from the Southern Rim. Nothing prepared us for this. What shocks most from above is the sheeeeeer size of the Canyon. We are looking 16 kilometers accross and 1600 meters down. The canyon is also some 450 kilometers long.. We look at the steep Kaibab trail on the cliff opposite and decide to go for it.
We walk deeper and deeper into the canyon, leaving behind the rock layers formed over millions of years.
A different life existed on every each of these layers, in its time. We pass the juniper-condor layer, later on the grassland-mammoth layer. At Skeleton Point, we peek glimps the swamp-dinosaur level. On the bottom of the canyon, the Colorado river continues carrying sand, gravel, and rocks to the Gulf of California, eroding weak layers, causing hard layers to collaps, tirelessly excavating the ancient history of the planet.
According to a legend, the Coyote people were building a big village. They were so busy making the place pretty that the coyotes got upset and turned the Indians into stone, turning the pots of paint over their heads.
Bryce Canyon indeed feels lively. You almost see a gathering of Indians here, or a white family watching a fat Indian boy emerging from among the wigwams.
The faces are grotesque but it does not matter. This is the place to let the imagination go.
We feel like going for a walk in the neighbouring national forest. But the dirt road is treacherous today. Althoug driving slowly, we come into sliding, and sink deep, deep into the mud. I should almost say marshes. We dug some mud out, support the wheels with wood trunks, but the car just sinks deeper. We take out the airjack, but it sinks with the car. By miracle, a Mormon family drives by with a trax on their trailer and helps us out. The first think we do after that is to wash the car and change clothes (:)
We spend a couple of days in the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, a fantastic region of deep canyons, arches, plateaus and cliffs. The area was designated a National Monument just recently in 1996is considered to be one of the last explored regions of the continental United States. We drive the scenic highway number 12 and the backroads, cook at the river side, and climb the slick rocks.
We cross to the birch woods and pine forests of the Dixie National Forest. In the evening, the skies crack and, surprise, surprise, send down snow during the whole night.
A sinuous wrinkle in the Earth's crust stretches for hundred miles across south-central Utah like a giant Cretaceous serpent. This impressive buckling of rock was created by the same forces that lifted up the Colorado Plateau 65 million years ago. Capitol Reef National Park preserves the fold and its jumble of cliffs, massive domes, soaring spires, and stark monoliths.
The bright green of cottonwood shrub shines against high red walls with black stripes that inspired the Fremont Indian artists.
Spring is probably the best time to walk along the red walls and the rushing Fremont river through twisting canyons, and under the graceful arches.
A straight stretch of road takes us to Moab through an interesting piece of desert.
As we pass Mordor, the ring on my finger starts glowing (:)
Moab is a kind of capital of the outdoors. People gather here from around the US and Europe to go hiking, biking, cayaking on the Colorado, climbing, fishing or rock climbing with the offroad vehicles. As we visit, there is a gathering of some 150 high sitting Toyotas from around the globe, to try those crazy things on the slickrocks.
There is also an oldtimer car gathering and a somewhat passive crowd of onlookers.
We surf on the wireless Internet in the local library as we bump into fellow globe trotters. A young Slovenian couple is on the road around the globe for two years. The youngsters have lived some incredible adventures. An icy Pakistani river took their Toyota rafting. They had to cross Kashmir during a bone-chilling night on India Independence Eve and deal with local generals. They were able to avoid all the cows on the roads of India (:) Have a safe trip in South America and Africa, we follow you online!
As we open the eyes in the morning by the canyon, perhaps twenty surprised deer run by.
The conditions are just right for wildflowers to bloom in profusion.
A fifteen minutes drive from Moab takes us to the Arches National Park. We enter a stunning, surreal world of natural arches, bridges, and castles, which give the impression of having been left behind by an ancient civilization.
The park lies atop an undeground salt bed. Hundreds of meters thick in places, this salt layers have been deposited across the Colorado Plateau when a sea flowed into the region and evaporated. Salt bed has been later covered with residue of floods and winds. Much of the debris was compressed into rock. Salt under pressure is unstable, and the salt layers below the Arches park shifted, buckled, liquified, and repositioned, thrusting the rock layers upward into domes. Over time, water seeped into cracks in the domes, froze over the winter, expanded, and broke off bits and pieces. Wind cleaned out the loose particles. A series of free standing fins remained.
Wind and water attacked those fins. Many collapsed, but some survived despite missing sections. These became the famous arches. The Arches National Park boasts the greatest density of natural arches in the world. The longest, the Landscape Arch, measures over hundred meters from base to base.
The landscapes of the park are dynamic. New arches are being formed, and old ones are being destroyed. Occasionally, big pieces of rock detach from the arches in front of the visitors eyes, or over their heads. In 1991, a slab of rock about 20 meters long, over three meters wide, and a meter thick fell from the right underside of the Landscape Arch with a thunder.
Erosion sculptured other impossible forms throughout the park: Towering spires, pinnacles, and balanced rocks perched atop seemingly inadequate basis, defying the gravity forces.
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West of Moab lies another vast area of rock wilderness, the Canyonlands. 530 square miles of countless arches, spires, canyons, and buttes sitting inside the canyons like pieces of puzzle.
There is life in the red sand and rocks.
We return to Moab over the White Rim. An easy offroad that cannot be more recommended.
As far as we know, the dinosaurs dominated the land for 100 million years before the environment dramatically changed 65 million years ago. Reconstructing a history thus far and that long is a daunting challenge. But accidents continue delivering anecdotical evidence.
Some 145 million years ago, rainy season brought heavy floods to today's Utah. Late-Jurassic dinosaurs attempting to cross a river were carried away by strong currents and crushed against the rocks. Their bones were burried in a sandbar. Later, inland seas deposited thousands of meters of sand and mud over the sandbar, compressing and solidifying it. Mineral-laden water filtering through fossilized the burried bones.
About 65 millions years ago, the earth's crust buckled, lifting the sandbar. The erosion gradually brought the sandbar to the surface and exposed the fossilized dinosaur bones. By 1909, Earl Douglass found them. The quarry opened the world's best window on Late-Jurassic. It has produced fossils from all four major Late-Jurassic dinosaur groups: plant-eating sauropods, stegosaurs, and ornithopods, and flesh-eating theropods.
Complete dinosaur skelletons could be reconstructed. Not something that would easily fit a living room (:)
We can still only speculate about things such as colors of extinct dinosaur bodies. The best inspiration offer the descendants of feathered dinosaurs: the birds. Or so the theory based on latest findings goes.
It raining cats and dogs as we get invited to the Nelson's ranch to spend the night. Many thanks indeed, give us a shout when you get stuck in the Swiss mountains!
