Southern California Trip - November 2020

I did a nice road trip down to Southern California after Thanksgiving. After being relatively restricted in travel since coming back from the UK it was nice to get out and see some different countryside.  In the time of Coronavirus traveling was perhaps not the best of things to do but I was careful and didn’t really come into too much contact with anyone - masks all the time, food in the car, etc.

I did see some interesting places along the way however and that always makes a road trip worthwhile.

Woolworth's Bakersfield

The Woolworth's Cafeteria

First stop was in Bakersfield where there was an old Woolworth’s store complete with its original cafeteria.  Of course it is not operated by Woolworth’s, they went out of business in 1997, but it is now an antiques market but it retains its signage and its cafeteria.  I had a quick look around and bought  some old postcards of Santa Barbara.

The Kress Department Store, Bakersfield

Across the road from the Woolworths is an old department store, again now defunct and housing an antiques market, but what a beautiful art deco building.  Just a wonderful building that must have been quite grand in its day.

Traveling out from Bakersfield on Highway 58 you quickly pass through some beautiful countryside as you go up into the Tehachapis.  Bakersfield and its surrounds down in the plains of the San Joaquin Valley are quite desolate and boring but on the east side of Bakersfield it is beautiful.

Cesar Chavez National Monument 

In the foothills of the Tehachapis, in the small town of Keene, is the Cesar Chavez National Monument.  I hadn’t heard of this place and I was surprised to find it was a National Monument.  It is the place where Cesar lived in later years and from where he did his labor organization work.  It is also the place where he is buried.  The park and its facilities were closed but I did wander around a little to stretch my legs.  It is, to say the least, quite a modest park.

The Tehachapi Loop

Just a few miles beyond Keene, is the world famous, at least among railway enthusiasts, Tehachapi Loop.  This loop gains 77 ft in altitude over a 1200 ft diameter circle.  I think one of the first of its kind being built in 1870 by the Southern Pacific.   The sign says it is one of the 7 wonders of the railroad world.

Parked Aircraft at Mojave Airport

Beyond Tehachapi Highway 58 continues into the Mojave Desert and the town of Mojave itself.  The airport there is a favorite place to stack aircraft that aren’t needed for a while and there are plenty of those these days.  The dry moderate climate makes it a good place to warehouse planes until they are needed again - if they are to be needed again.  I poked around at the airport for a while.  There were a lot of cars there but no visible signs of people.  It appears there is some rocket research going on there too.

Joshua Tree

From Mojave I went further east to Barstow and then dropped down to Joshua Tree National Park.  The Joshua trees are just so majestic and beautiful and I always like driving through the area.  Of course in Joshua Tree Park the rocks are impressive too and I had a nice little hike around one of the trails there.

Joshua Tree National Park

For the return trip it was pretty much the same things in reverse.  I did time things just right to catch a train going over the Tehachapi Loop which made my day.  How impressive to see the front of the train pass over or under the back of the train.

Colonel Allensworth State Park

North from Bakersfield I took a detour to Colonel Allensworth State Park.  This turned out to be quite disappointing but nevertheless quite historically important.  Colonel Allensworth was born into slavery but escaped to join the Union Army in the Civil War.  After the war he became a preacher and moved west.  Among many other things he created the town named after him as the only town founded by African Americans in the West.  Now it is a collection of preserved buildings and homes in the middle of the cotton fields of the Central Valley.  The town died away after Allensworth’s death and during the Reagan governorship it was restored as a state park.  It has campsites and a visitor center but no one else was there.  There is a railway platform but you have to make special requests for a ticket before the train will stop there.

Stebbins Cold Canyon Hike

On Saturday afternoon I did a hike with Nancy in Stebbins Cold Canyon, the UC Davis maintained preserve to the west of Winters.  The loop trail here is one I had done many times before but I didn’t realize that this area had been hit by one of the recent wildfires.  The whole area had been decimated and all the fine work that UC Davis had done on creating a nice trail had been wiped out.  The trail is still there but not much else except for a few burned trees and a lot of ash.  It was strange to walk through this kind of landscape where earlier in the year it would have been a wooded trail, enclosed with shrubs and bushes and quite shady in many parts.  Now it is open and all the bushes are gone and only the odd burned tree stump remains.  Even the wooden steps that had been put in place to take the trail up the hillsides were burned.  It must have been quite the conflagration.

On top of the ridge line you could see the extent of the fire and how some slopes were untouched and others were simply denuded.  Of course Lake Berryessa to the north west looked all the more splendid in this landscape.

The hillsides without any ground cover are going to be a real issue if we get any rain.  They are quite steep and the ground is just loose dirt and ash with nothing to hold it in place.  The rain will just rush down the hillside cutting new channels and gorges in the path of least resistance.  

That being said, there were already a few signs of regrowth.  There were quite a few small scrub oak shoots poking through already.  My botanist friend later told me they were Quercus Berberidafolia.  

As we hiked along the ridge line, we heard the wailing of a dog in the valley below.  It didn’t sound like a coyote but it did sound very much like a dog in distress and it just went on and on.  I decided to investigate once I got back down to the road again.

A CHP helicopter flew over us and did several passes up and along the valley and around the ridge.  Obviously they were looking for something or someone but after a while they went down to the road below and landed in an adjacent field where there appeared to be some police action. 

As we made our way down, the helicopter came back and lowered a basket to pick up a hiker.  I thought at first it was the distressed dog they were retrieving but no, just someone who had sprained an ankle on the hillside.  Back down at the road there were fire trucks, an ambulance, and police cars.  All of that and a helicopter make for quite an operation just for a sprained ankle.  

I jogged back up the trail to try and find my “distressed dog” but the yelping had now stopped and I didn’t find any sign of the animal.  I am not sure what I would have done with a stressed out dog in the wilderness anyway.  Nevertheless it is the thought that counts.

A stop on the way back at Berryessa Brewing Company for a beer and steak sandwich from the Buckhorn’s food truck.  A perfect end to the day.