Ehmann Family: SoCal

For our February break we headed out to southern California without Caroline, who was traveling in Spain with her high school Spanish class. Los Angeles was recovering from forest fires that devastated areas in January. On our first day, Tessie and I headed out to Bakersfield while Heather, Erin, and Chinda shopped.

The rugged topography of SoCal is utterly foreign to my East Coast sensibilities. This is the I-5 heading out of LA. As my trusty companion, Roadside Geology of Southern California informed me, there are only 4 mountain passes out of the LA basin and each is a major transportation and supply route. Apparently when Russian president Nikita Khrushchev visited in 1959, he remarked that Russia had long known of these pinch points and targeted each one with intercontinental ballistic missiles.

President Eisenhower authorized the interstate system in part to enable rapid deployment of military vehicles and supplies across the country. At the time when this 8-lane section of the I-5 over Tejon Pass was completed in the late 1960s, it was the largest earth-moving project in history.

Our route took us to the edge of the Mojave Desert where snowcapped peaks, green energy, and interstate commerce intersect

Any idea what that caravan is famous for transporting? Give you a hint, we saw one source when we visited Death Valley. Answer below.

Thanks again to my geological travel guide, we stopped to stand on the San Andreas fault. The gray stuff pictured here is clay called fault gouge, formed when granite rocks were pulverized by the pressure of the North American tectonic plate scraping against the Pacific plate. Three weeks prior to this trip, I felt my first earthquake ever, a 3.8 magnitude quake centered somewhere off the Maine coast. But up here on the most famous fault in the US, I felt safe playing Russian roulette on a geologic time scale.

The mule trains to Mojave carried borax and other salts with funny names like trona. These days the iron horse does all the pulling.

Our destination in Bakersfield was Cesar Chavez NHS

There were testimonials from people impacted by Cesar's life and dedication to farm workers

Replica of a farm worker's cabin

The estate is called La Paz and suitably is the resting place of Cesar, his wife, and his 2 dogs

Heading into the orchards of Bakersfield we passed this sign. Are Okie pies a thing?

Not really - they're fruit turnovers sold at this great farm store. We had one filled with aprium. What's an aprium - well it's an apricot-plum hybrid and apparently different from a pluot, a plumcot, or an apriplum

California, I want to dislike you but here in this box from Murray's is why I can't do it - your local food is so good. We got apples and oranges and dates and walnuts, the aprium okie pie, and then some dehydrated candy for Tessie and rehydrating wines for the adults.

Our next stop was the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Some of these NRAs are dubious in my opinion - see Amistad and Lake Roosevelt - but Santa Monica Mtns is not. We chose our Airbnb in Woodland Hills to be nearby with dreams of running on Dirt Mulholland (the dashed red line), but heavy rains led to road closures in the upper section, while the lower section remained closed due to the infamous forest fire that devoured Pacific Palisades.

At the VC we learned of the feast or famine precipitation issues in SoCal

The next day was our outing to the Channel Islands. Heather's college roommate Julie and her family, who live in Santa Barbara, joined us and Chinda

On the outward journey we encountered a megapod of dolphins (see video)

An oceanographic map tracked our progress from Ventura to Santa Cruz Island

Apparently if you're navigating by sight, you aim for the "clump of trees"

Due to their relative isolation from the coast, the Channel Islands are home to several unique species found nowhere else on Earth. One of them is the island fox, which evolved to be about the size of a housecat, and they roam in the daylight enjoying their status at the top of the food chain.

The island scrub-jay lives only on Santa Cruz Island and has the smallest range of any North American bird species

Back in LA, we had an entire day without Park visits, and everyone took full advantage of their free time

That's better

We went down to Venice Beach so that Erin and I could run on the Santa Monica boardwalk. Erin was not a fan of the colorful characters hanging around.

Caroline, meanwhile, had toured Madrid and was on her way to Salamanca, where she stayed with a host family and took Spanish lessons

We left the LA basin and headed east to the Mojave. LA, I have to tell you that I'm somewhere between La La Land and LA Confidential on you. I get the appeal but I find it unnerving to see every square millimeter of habitable land fully occupied. Let's see what one your nearby playgrounds, Palm Springs, has to offer

Horseback riding, for one. Show jumping and polo are pastimes of the retiree set here in the desert. We were on a ride to see the famous local flora.

These are the California fan palms that give the city its name. They signify that running water is nearby, which reassured me that at least this part of SoCal can actually support human development without carting in water from hundreds of miles away.

On our way to Joshua Tree, the National Park, we passed Joshua Tree, the Inn, where U2 stayed while writing Joshua Tree, the Album

At the Park VC they displayed the Album and admitted that this iconic photo with the Joshua Tree was taken in Death Valley National Park

Instead of hiking 3 miles of the Fortynine Palms trail into the park, Erin ran it

There is the eponymous oasis, although the number of palms is under-reported

I think that the fan palms are way cooler than the joshua trees, but at the same time who would want to visit Fan Palm National Park?

We enjoyed great food and drinks in Palm Springs and then moved to our last stop back on the coast

Cabrillo National Monument commemorates the Spanish discovery of San Diego. With Coronado in AZ and De Soto in FL, this completes the trio of conquistador park sites.

One of these houses around Point Loma lighthouse was used in the first Top Gun movie as the home of Viper

Cabrillo NM is on US Navy land and offers an expansive view east towards San Diego and Tijuana,

and my phone thought that I crossed the border

If the shape of the lower 48 were stretched into a rectangle, there would be National Park sites at each corner and near the midpoints of each side. It has not been easy nor cheap, but we have visited these 8 perimetric parks. Counter-clockwise starting at the bottom is Palo Alto Battlefield in deep south Texas (see 2023), Dry Tortugas west of the Florida Keys (see 2020), Cape Hatteras National Seashore in NC (see 2018), St. Croix Island in ME on the border with New Brunswick (see 2018), Isle Royale in Lake Superior (see 2021), San Juan Islands in WA within view of British Columbia (see 2020), Redwoods on the Cali north coast (see 2023), and finally Cabrillo in San Diego within view of Mexico.

Our hotel was in La Jolla, which I was warned, would be beautiful and of course it was. Erin ran on the beach while we watched the hordes of surfers ride the paltry waves.

And the sunsets were amazing, again as advertised

I did a long run up the coast, past the ridiculously beautiful UC San Diego campus and Salk Institute

Black's Beach is a premier paragliding destination and even has an official gliderport

The San Diego Zoo was also, amazing. Everyone seemed to be there to see the pandas, and so instead we saw everything but the pandas. If you look at the gorilla there in the front of the enclosure, you will appreciate where the saying came from "posture as good as a gorilla's".

At our lunch restaurant we viewed another captivating scene, this time of the dumpling makers at Din Tai Fung. Their soup dumplings were, you guessed it, phenomenal.