I had a date!

Actually, I had more than one.  I had a date shake, date cookies, date bread, and came home with about a pound of medjool dates.  Delicious!

Last week a friend from church and I adventured south of Death Valley to the China Date Ranch.  What a crazy little oasis tucked away in a beautiful canyon and surrounded by desert.  We got an early start and were the first visitors to the ranch that day.

The land was originally settled by a Chinese immigrant named Ah Foo.  (The latter is also a pronoun heard in certain circles in the Houston area.)  Later, other families came and settled the oasis and used the water from the natural spring for farming.  One of the wives bought dates from a mail order catalogue and it's been dates since.

We stopped into the modest museum.  It was quite modest.

Then we wandered through the grove.  The weather was a bit overcast and perfect.  The grove was lovely. They had all the different species labeled with their countries of origin.  As we walked through, I had a million questions.

How many dates does a tree produce?  When is the harvest?  What are the sheets covering the dates?  So many questions!

As we wandered, an old beat-up pick-up truck came up to us.  The grizzly old man inside said he was going up to turn off the irrigation and did we want to come?  Absolutely!  We climbed into the cramped and very dusty cab and 79 year old Junior took us up to the irrigation pipes and the spring reservoir...and I got a lot of my questions answered.

The sheets protect the dates from the birds which could easily put the ranch out of business.  All the trees are hand fertilized (what a horrible task!).  Harvest runs from Sept to Jan.  Some trees can produce up to 300 or more pounds of dates each year.

We got to the pond and I was surprised to see ducks.  They are some well fed (by humans) ducks and were quite friendly.

Junior dropped us back in the grove and we continued to wander.  We found this fascinating fence made of glass bottles.  Really cool.  It was overcast that day but I would have loved to see what the sun does to this wall.

The bottle heads poking out from the other side.  Too cool.

There are quite a few hikes that sprout from the Ranch and we headed south with hopes of finding the Amargosa River.  No such luck with the river, but we did stumble upon this awesome old building.  Definitely left over from mining days.

Don't think I'd be protected all that well from the elements.

Beautiful desert colors.

We hiked back to the bakery and gift shop.  As my date shake was prepared, I wandered through the gift shop.  The first thing I saw was two Houston, TX mugs.  What?  So out of place.  I found a lot of strange things in the gift shop; shoes, a vacuum, dolls made entirely out of sea shells, sombreros, mailboxes...it was a bit odd.

I had my date shake, ate a picnic lunch, and came home with mejool dates and tried to slowly make my way through them.  They didn't last that long and were so delicious.

As we drove home through Tacopa, there was a place with random pots sitting on the hillside.  Those pots are easily four feet tall.  What they are for, I have not clue.  I took a picture.

I have a feeling I will be going back to the bakery for more date goodies.  So decadent!

Manzanar

I have decided I need to take advantage of the warmer winter we're experiencing in southeastern California and get out and explore and see.  Two weeks ago I decided to trek out to the Owens Valley and visit Manzanar National Historic Site.

The drive from Death Valley in the early hours of the morning, coming over the last ridgeline and seeing the eastern slopes of the Sierras and Mt. Whitney was lovely.  I couldn't have picked a more beautiful day.  As I drove up the valley and approached Manzanar, the guard tower seemed out of place.  Then I thought about all the Japanese American internees who were also out of place here.

Little Car poses with the sign and the Sierras.

At the entrance.  I was speaking with a friend on the phone before the visit and he commented on the fact that these were called "relocation" centers.  I later shared a campfire with friends from Great Basin.  One said this is probably one of the best sites in the park service; not our nation's finest hour, but we still own up to what was done.  The spirit of the Japanese Americans 'relocated' here is truly incredible.

I watched the park film and found it very moving.  I picked up the Junior Ranger program and worked through the activities and read my way through the amazing museum and displays at the visitor center.  Not a whole lot remains of the site other than the gymnasium.  This diorama shows how large this place was.  Manzanar means apple orchard in Spanish.  At one time, it housed over 10,000 individuals.

Despite being behind barbed wire and surrounded by guard towers, the Japanese Americans tried to beautify this harsh desert landscape.  Currently, there are organizations excavating some of the old gardens and waterways the internees built.  Using your imagination, these places were ideal for forgetting where you were and why you were there.

What really struck me, was the cemetery.  Most people are familiar with this monument, or associate the obelisk with Manzanar.  What most pictures don't show, however, is that the cemetery is outside the barbed wire.

I wandered around Lone Pine, California and enjoyed my day immensely.  If you are unfamiliar with the history of the Japanese American internment in the United States during WWII, this is a part of our history we should all know about.

Earthquake

I experienced my first earthquake.  Back when I was living in Montana, we had a very small one.  I was out running and somehow missed the whole thing.  How?  I don't know.

Friday night, I was in bed, reading, when everything started to shake.  There was a terrible rumbling noise to accompany the shaking and the racket my bedside lamp was making didn't help the situation any either.  Not going to lie, it was rather scary.  I knew immediately it was an earthquake and knew housing was built on a fault (but what isn't in California) but still, it was a heart-pounding 20 sec ride.  At the same time, it was a powerful experience for me to feel just how powerful the forces of the earth can be.

Thanks to USGS and Google, I have the images below.  First, here is a map from USGS.  This is showing earthquake activity.  The light blue dot near the Nevada border shows where the quake occurred.

Here are the specs for that quake.  It's a bad image, I know.  It was a 3.2 magnitude, 59 km (36ish miles) SSW from Beatty, Nevada.

It occurred at 10:37 pm, Friday the 17th.  The latitude and longitude coordinates are also listed for the epicenter.

To make it easier, I turned to Google and had Google maps pin-point that epicenter.  The source of the quake is where the red dot is west of the highway.  The red dot east of the highway is my house.  The scale on this map is down in the lower-left corner.  With all I've done to the image, I don't know how accurate that scale is anymore, but basically, I live less than ten miles from the epicenter.

I talked to my dad about it.  He lived in California for four years going to school but never felt an earthquake.  However, when he was living in southern Idaho, he did feel the Yellowstone earthquake of 1959.  He was fairly young at the time, but the memory of it was still very clear.

Wow.  Mother Nature.  Wow.

Titus Canyon

Starting the year off right, I got Isabelle a tank of gas a big bag of Doritos and we were off for adventuring.  I have wanted to see Titus canyon, partly so I can tell people who want to drive it what to expect and because I've heard it's a pretty place.  I've hiked some of the narrows, but wanted the full experience.

 

Our mode of transportation.

The narrows at the very end were pretty spectacular, but the colors leading up to the canyon proper were amazing!  Wow!  I hate that my pictures can't do justice to the beauty of Death Valley.

This is as we came up over Red Pass.

Colors, colors, colors!  Imagine all the mountain slopes covered in the most brilliant of pastels.

We stopped at Leadfield to hike around and to eat lunch.  If you think Scotty of Scotty's Castle fame was a con man...the guy (whose name I can't remember) who established the mining town of Leadfield was dastardly!

As usual, I'm late and the post office is closed.

Hooray for exploring.  Come out to visit and give me an excuse to see a new place in the park.