Trona Pinnacles, Searles Valley, CA. Take Highway 178 east from the Kern River Valley. Watch the landscape shift from California golden homestead to pioneer death trap. Look for the power spot. The Trona Pinnacles are a geologic anomaly where calcium-rich groundwater met alkaline lake water over thousands of years. The result is a ghost lake…
Red Mountain, CA. Red Mountain is a time capsule. Daily life in a high desert mining town. Pop. 130, but the saloon is shut down. The grocery store is only of value as a piece of decay, for exploring old wrecks. It’s a deep freeze of memory, little motions among the frozen foods that make…
Johannesburg, CA. Johannesburg, CA is one in a cluster of ghost towns where Hwy 14 and Hwy 395 meet, at the southernmost edge of the eastern Sierra Nevadas. I had just come off the heels of Randsburg, a quirky town with characters and rusted equipment and dreams going to waste. Johannesburg threw me for a…
Red Rock Canyon State Park, CA. The Red Rock Canyon State Park is a little slice of Utah in the California Desert. Take Highway 14 through the Mojave until just about where it hits Highway 395, that road pocketed with California wonders that edges along the eastern Sierra Nevadas. You’ll think you’re in the middle…
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