Getting Our Kicks

Our next stop was Joshua Tree National Park in California, so we headed south out of Laughlin on route 95 and then Interstate 40 and then some other roads, and, eventually, found ourselves on The Mother Road, as Steinbeck called it, old Route 66, now, in these parts, San Bernardino County route 66.

The scenery is stark+++; Vicki singing "I've been
through the desert in a camper with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain..."

We were not impressed with San Bernardino County route 66
until, at length, we crossed some of the old markers

Approaching the Amboy crater, deep in Mojave country

Unlike most establishments and settlements along old route 66,
Roy's still shows vital signs, just barely

Not so, the Amboy School

You leave route 66 en route to 29 Palms and cross Bristol Lake,
a dry lake that has been mined for (sodium) chloride for a
century or so

What contemporary chloride mining looks like to low-flying
extraterrestrials

The 50 or so miles around 29 Palms and the entrance to Joshua
Tree National Park  are studded, so to speak, every 5 acres or
so, with little cabins or huts or hovels, such as the above, mostly
boarded up or burned down; certainly one of the more interesting
sights along this otherwise, um, stark, drive; a park ranger later
explained to us they are vestiges of a homesteading act in the
50s, and some thousands of people, mostly southern Californians,
eager to build and prove up their five acres for free; sic transit,
Gloria