Day seventeen
The internationally-recognized official center of the world is located in Felicity, California—a city that was founded in the mid-1980s with the idea that it would serve as a museum of history and the center of the world. I learned this while watching an introductory video as part of my $8 private tour of the city/museum.
After the video, my guide unlocked a small pyramid that surrounds a metal disk marking the exact center. I was invited to step onto the disk, approaching from the south and gazing upon a small church atop a man-made hill to the north while making a wish for the next year. “Several people came back a year later and reported their wishes came true. Except one lady who couldn’t remember her wish,” reported my guide. I received a certificate to officiate my accomplishment of having stood at the center of the world, and was left to explore the rest of the site at my leisure, with admission valid for one month.
I found Felicity while looking at maps online to plan my trip. Its geometric design from an aerial view piqued my interest. The outdoor Museum of History in Granite is comprised of umpteen granite monuments that have been or are being engraved with everything from American history to zoology—the idea being that the information will be preserved for thousands of years independent of technology or upkeep.
After spending ample time exploring the granite monuments, I turned north from the Interstate onto Ogilby Road, a twenty-some mile road that passes through a desolate landscape, a ghost town, and several well-populated boondocking locations. The road itself would make a good study in which types of pavement weather the harsh desert conditions the best, as the surface seemed to vacillate between various shades of grey and degrees of deterioration. None were great, but the medium-grey was my preference.
Finally reaching the end of the road and turning west, I briefly pass through a stunning red badlands, then, for much longer, an open gold mine.
My destination is the Algodones Dunes, an expansive stretch of mostly-barren sand dunes, the existence of which I don’t understand. I had heard about several options for camping at the dunes, but I hadn’t heard that most of those spots are paved RV pads, or that the primary attraction for most visitors is the potential for off-roading in dune buggies and supped-up Jeeps. After several failed attempts to find a spot, and with the fast-approaching sunset limiting my options, I found an unpaved campsite five miles into the park, and positioned myself next to a road sign with the hopes that people zipping around on dune buggies would see the sign and avoid running over my tent.
The sunset was beautiful. It didn’t mark the end of off-roading—the buggies blaze up with various utilitarian and decorative lights. Around me, RV generators buzz. I retire to my tent, feeling out of my element and ready to make an early start in the morning.
Day eighteen
Leaving the dunes, I find myself in farmland. I read a book years ago called Gardens in the Dunes by Leslie Marmon Silko. It’s a sweeping novel that, in part, explores the ancestral wisdom of working within the constraints of the desert to grow plants and food to subsist on. This farmland is nothing like that. I pass multiple cattle feed lots, each one stretching for miles. I pull up my neck gaiter despite the heat, to filter out the smell.
Camping options seem to be limited, so I’ve booked a hotel room in Brawley, California, which I reach well before I’m able to check-in. I continue to the next town and the promise of another chance at a date milkshake. The Westmoreland Date Shake store has more of a health store feel than the convenience store offering date shakes in Dateland, Arizona. I get a few honey straws and a handful of tiny sesame cookies. The date shake here focuses on using date as the sweetener for an almond-milk base, rather than adding dates to ice cream. After a few sips I regret not ordering a larger size.
My hotel room has some deferred maintenance needs, but pulling a chair out onto the veranda I’m able to get a little more sun and overlook the courtyard. There seem to be some longer-term lodgers, who I think might be migrant farm workers.
I accidentally burn a paper cup in the microwave heating water for tea, so end up using my camp stove for hot water instead. There are a few restaurants in town, but I’m uninspired by the menus, so get a frozen entree and salad from the grocery store for dinner.
Day nineteen
I made a short detour down a bumpy road to see Salvation Mountain near the entrance to Slab City. The man-made folk-art mountain was the decades-long project of Leonard Knight to express his conviction that “God is Love.” The collection of verses and sincerity of the message reminds me of a Dr. Bronner’s soap bottle.
I think about venturing further into Slab City, but the bumpy road deters me. I had thought about camping there the night before, but heard wildly mixed reviews of the so-called last free place on earth, where travelers, squatters, retirees, runaways and all sorts of people stay temporarily or in more permanent camps and operate on a barter economy to varying degrees. Nearly everyone I pass on my way in and out gives a big smile and wave. It seems like it would have been a cool place to visit, but maybe in a van and/or with more people.
Further north I find a similar community in Bombay Beach, which—artificially or not, I can’t tell—gives the impression of a post-apocalyptic beachfront resort. I make myself some lunch underneath a series of steel and barbed-wire sculptures and look at the Salton Sea to the west, an inland saltwater body of water fed, these days, mostly by agricultural runoff. I later learn that millions of years ago the sea was connected to the Gulf of California, but that sediment from the Colorado River (including deposits from the Grand Canyon) eventually formed a rift between the two.
Someone in a golf cart pulls up next to me while I’m riding out of town and asks me about my trip. I hadn’t been entirely sure if anyone lived in the RVs and small buildings around town, many of which are graffitied and boarded up. He warns me about traffic in the mountain passes before we part ways when I stop at a convenience store and buy a soda I’ve never heard of—Cactus Cooler—that turns out to be delicious.
I camped at Mecca Beach in the Salton Sea Recreation Area. I brought my camp chair and book to the expansive shoreline and pretended I was at the ocean. The faint manure smell and realization that what I thought was sand is actually innumerable dead barnacle shells shattered the illusion.