Day 7, Part 2: Friday, April 28th, 2006
Tucson, Arizona to Ontario, California
The road north of Why leads through the town of Ajo and the austere plains of the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force range. The cholla and the saguaro disappear, leaving only a handful of rocks and some painted desert hills, which I'm not capable of photographing to my satisfaction. The road through the Air Force range is littered with pebbles, too, and trucks keep kicking them up onto my windshield. They eventually leave two small cracks as souvenirs for me to take home, before I make it to Gila Bend, Interstate Eight, and the way to Yuma--another place I've longed dreamed of seeing.
Yuma always fascinated me as a child because it had such extremely high temperatures in the summer. (I would follow the high temperature listings in the paper when I wasn't in school and sometimes even make competitive "weather leagues" out of them.) Now that I've finally made it there, some twenty-five years later, I somewhat disappointedly discover that it's only 80 degrees outside.
I don't let the lack of genuine swelter stop me from pretending that it's hot outside, as I take a picture of myself in front of the courthouse. Since it's not the actual courthouse anymore--the county was in the process of moving to a new building right down the street--I don't feel particularly guilty about putting on a show.
In Yuma, I get in touch with my old friends Steve Werth and Dan Hennessy on the phone and am reminded for the first time on the trip exactly why I've come all this distance. I start to feel excited that I'll be seeing my old stomping grounds again for the first time in ten years. I only have to drive through most of southern California to get there--starting with the astonishingly barren Imperial Sand Dunes.
I'm not sure when--if ever--I will be in this part of the world again, so I make sure I get a picture of myself in front of the Imperial County courthouse while I can. It's located in a big agricultural town called El Centro, which is 50 feet below sea level, in the heart of the "Imperial Valley."
As far as I can tell, I'm the only white boy in El Centro, and I catch a lot of strange looks from the local populace as I drive through town.
There is one other place I want to see before I get back to Pomona--the Salton Sea, an artificial body of water in the low desert that was made by flooding waters from the Colorado River about a hundred years ago. Before that happened, this place was known as the "Salton Sink", and, at nearly 250 feet below sea level, it rivaled Death Valley for a time as the hottest place in the country. I get stopped on my way through its brutal emptiness by the Border Patrol, who are interested in checking the back seat of my car for illegal immigrants. While they busy themselves making sure that there's no one back there, I get a snapshot of the slice of the Salton Sea that I can see from the window of my car.
Fighting unexpectedly heavy traffic the whole way, I finally get to the Salton Sea and drive into a little town called "Bombay Beach." It is undoubtedly the weirdest place I have ever seen. A large, rectangular grid of broken-down trailers, sitting at the edge of the Sea, it looks like it once tried to be a tourist resort but failed. I don't see a single human being out there until I pull into a boat docking area right by the water. There's a sign that says "all visitors must check in," but no one's around except for a guy painting an old trailer while he listens to music at full volume on a boombox. I ask him if it's okay for me to take pictures, and he jumps right into a story about how he's trying to fix up the trailer for a girl who's pregnant and has nowhere else to go. For some reason, he wants me to know that he's not sure if he's going to get paid for the work or not. And, oh yeah, it's fine if I want to take pictures. I thank him and wish him luck before I head to the "beach", wondering how lonely this abandoned place can get.
A haze in the sky that's been intensifying ever since Yuma has taken over the horizon at the Salton Sea, making it impossible to tell where the water ends and the sky begins. The water itself is brackish, and I pass on the opportunity to dip my hands into it. It makes the air feel cool, though, and it looks surreal, as I stare over it into the nothingness at the edge of space.
I get out of the car to take one last look at the Salton Sea as I drive away. Somewhere beyond those mountain ranges, I know, lies the end of the road.
