Or, "Bicycling on Mars." I took a picture of the sign at the east edge of Twenty Nine Palms. It says "No Services Next 100 Miles." It wasn't lying. I've been on some empty stretches of road before, the Alaska Highway, several ways across Nevada, eastern Montana, etc. But this stretch of the Mohave/Colorado takes the prize. And it's not just that I'm on a bike, I challenge you to find 100 road miles anywhere where there isn't even so much as a 1 pump gas station. And I chose to bike this route?? Never fear, I started with 10 quarts of water and made 70 miles across it before stopping for the night in the shade of a spiny Tamarisk in a sandy wash (hoping for no rain.) And let me tell you, there is something indescribable about this landscape. The bony granite ridges would look right at home in the high mountains somewhere, they just happen to be out here in the dryness, and the sheer and total emptiness is amazing. You get used to at least a house here and there, pastures, whatever. but once you get past the last 1 room shack-house east of 29 Palms (there's a bunch of them, most very dilapidated, I think perhaps people build them that size because they are just under the square-footage for which you would need a building permit) you enter a literal wilderness of pure landscape. Landscape as landscape, no additions or embellishments, just geology and terrestrial geometry as far as the eye can see.
I'm now in Arizona (yay!) in the little town of Parker next to the Colorado River. Hottest part of the entire country. Tomorrow is supposed to be 101 degrees, which is nothing compared to July and August here. Nevertheless afternoons are almost unrideable, my plan is to start early and do about 50 miles by midday then lie low in the shade (if I can find some) the rest of the day. Do that till I get to the high country of central Arizona.
The way these towns are built is interesting. The ultimate in decentralized unplanned development, from a loose core of stores and motels out to a long ragged edge of strange little shack houses surrounded by dirt and rabid dogs. Nothing against modest houses, in fact I much prefer them, but the impression here is of people aspiring to much more but finding their version of the American Dream on a 2 acre tract of rocks and dust with a sun-bleached American flag and no-trespassing signs on the fence in case you wanted to bother them as they sit in front of their satellite dish tv after a day at the vermiculite mine or weapons depot.
Posted by danreedmiller at May 15, 2003 05:15 PM