Deserts and Vineyards

I usually suck at nature photography, so I was happy to capture this hummingbird on my camera on the hills near Paso Robles.

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold...", begins the gonzo classic Fear and loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. As we entered California, crossing the Colorado river from Arizona, I thought that someone might have spiked my dinner with hallucinogenics. The outside thermometer of our rental car showed 102 Fahrenheit (39 Celsius) even though it was more than an hour after sunset. As I stopped the car outside our motel in Needles, CA, and opened the door, I realized there was nothing wrong with my senses or the thermometer. The June in Californian desert is hot, even at night.

The other distinctive feature of the desert are the freight trains. They can be seen in New Mexico and Arizona, too. Apparently they mostly transport goods from China onwards from U.S. west coast ports. I didn't manage to take any useful photos of them, but I captured the video below on my phone somewhere between Barstow and Paso Robles. Here, too, I missed the engines, and actually this was one of the shortest trains we saw.

The are two separate traffic history  museums on the old Barstow Railway Station, Western America Railroad Museum and Route 66 Museum. I dare to recommend them to those who generally enjoy such museums. The museums are run by enthusiastic volunteers, with low resources, and it shows at times. Best part is the outdoor area of the railroad museum with mighty diesel engines. I would have enjoyed it more in a less extreme heat.

There is, of course, a Ford model T in the Route 66 museum.

Santa Fe company's FP45 diesel engine from 1967.

It probably is a little stupid to complain about heat on a desert, but the temperatures really were extreme. A malfunction in the car's air conditioning would have been literally life-threatening. It was impossible to spend more than very short period of time outdoors.

On the hills between the desert and the Pacific Ocean in Paso Robles, a wealthy, pleasant American small town straight out of a Hollywood movie. There are a lot of vineyards in and around Paso Robles, like many other places in California. During last two decades or so wine tourism has developed into a big thing around the state. I am not an expert on wine, but the Paso Robles varieties we tasted were good. There are a lot of tasting rooms around town and many vineyards around it are open for visitors. Visiting them provides an excellent opportunity to spend a lot of money in a short time.

There's an actual Wild West saloon in Paso Robles, the Pine Street Saloon in a building that dates from 1857, Naturally, it is haunted.

For a few years now, the state of California has suffered from a drought of historical proportions. The situation is so severe that the governor proclaimed a state of emergency in January 2015. Around Paso Robles it was not hard to believe that the situation was indeed exceptional. Of course, I don't know what the vegetation normally looks like in June, but I would imagine there would be some green instead of brown and gray.

California is one of the world's most productive agricultural lands, and the drought has obviously hit the farmers badly. We saw many roadside signs demanding politicians "do something". I have to say I don't really know what, say, the governor of California could do, perhaps he should perform a rain dance?

We visited the Californian Desert and Paso Robles June 19th to 22nd 2015.