August 17, 2014

August 17, 2014

We are ready to head back to our home in Tucson, AZ. From Pismo Beach, CA we cross the coastal mountains and make a brief stop at Carrizo Plain National Monument. We entered the southern gate of this large enclosed grassland plain. Unfortunately the Visitor Center for this BLM-managed monument is only open during the winter, so we don’t go very far. The San Andreas Fault runs the length of the park. The effect of this sliding transform fault is plainly visible at Carrizo, with the fault like a road cut between the mountain ranges.

We continued east crossing the San Joaquin Valley with its many citrus groves and garden vegetable fields, like onions and carrots. All these farms need huge numbers of migrant laborers to pick the crops. So it is appropriate that once across, we climb into the Tehachapi Mountains and stop at Cesar Chavez National Monument. This park was added by the presidential proclamation of Obama in 2012. I guess it was the honoring of one community organizer by another.

This site is the headquarters of the United Farm Workers union and the gravesite of Chavez. We watch the lengthy park film but it is very poor with little history. It is mostly about several friends saying how wonderful and caring Chavez was. From a Google search, I learned Chavez helped organize the Hispanic migrant workers. Apparently he was initially very successful but his over-controlling leadership-style ultimately limited the movement’s results. Surprisingly he was aggressively anti-immigrant because he felt illegal workers weakened the union bargaining power. We took a quick run through the room of photos, looked at his grave, and continued our journey east.

A hundred miles east in the Mojave Desert, we see a sign for a Borax Visitor Center in the little town of Boron, CA. An air-conditioned tourist spot is a great excuse to stretch the legs when crossing the desert. The Visitor Center turns out to be associated with the US Borax production plant and sits high on a hill overlooking the facility. We watched their movie and then perused the exhibits. The factory sits on an ancient dry lakebed where Mother Nature concentrated boron compounds for millions of years. Now borax crystals are mined from a huge open pit and then purified. Aimee and I laugh at the many now famous stars who cameo’ed in the TV show Death Valley Days and its 20 Mule Team Borax corporate sponsor.

Overheating we stop for the night at a private campground just east of Barstow, CA. Fortunately it has a pool that we jump into to cool off.