The Laughlin Excursion

• The trip to Laughlin is now another memory of good friends and a good time had by all.
  

• Leaving Hemet in a pounding rainstorm, the tour bus diverted from the freeway system to travel through California’s High Desert; passing vast empty spaces studded by flare-topped Yucca Trees, early-blooming cacti sporting white fluffy flowers or scarlet red tops and small towns (some already ghost towns and others possibly ghost towns in-the-making). We stopped for lunch at Yucca Valley where it was …… dare I say the “s-word”: snowing! Unlike many of my fellow travelers who live full-time in Southern California, I was not amused!

• Although the High Desert is prone to frequent earthquake activity, averaging in the 4+ range and once recorded at 7.4, people do persist in perching houses on the tops of hills.It is beyond me how they sleep at night.

• In addition to frequent seismic activity and a climate of extreme fluctuations (daytime summer temperatures reach 119 degrees and January lows are around 8 degrees), the High Desert has its own volcano. The Amboy Crater is a cinder cone surrounded by a field of volcanic ejecta. The blackened area creates a stark contrast against the brown and beige shades of the surrounding steeply sloped mountains and flat intervening valleys.

• A hundred years ago, wagon trains somehow managed passage across this bleak desert terrain although I imagine many pioneers lay buried in the sand. After World War I, the climate was considered ideal for returning veterans who suffered lingering effects from gas attacks. Their sanitariums were later abandoned. After World War II, the “jackrabbit project” offered tracts of desert land to returning veterans. Many of the shacks built as a condition of receiving the land are still standing, mostly abandoned on the unforgiving desert. Notwithstanding this rather inhospitable history, clusters of functioning mailboxes occasionally hug the roadside, standing tribute to people who apparently have found a way to cohabit with the coyotes and rattle snakes.
  

• No surprise, Southern California’s High Desert is the perfect setting for the world’s largest Marine Corps Base. Training exercises at this premier ‘live-fire base’ involve every weapons system in the Marine Corps’ arsenal, from small arms to attack aircraft. This is where Marines trained for the first Gulf War and where they continue to train for Iraq and Afghanistan. I didn’t want to even think about the meaning of the odd-shaped white-smoke formations that could be seen rising from the distant desert. I just closed my eyes and thought of Canada.

• The route between Hemet and Laughlin included a stretch of Route 66, a rough and narrow strip of ancient highway meandering through desolate countryside and punctuated by abandoned gas stations. Initially immortalized in song, the Route gained fame with me via a 1960s black and white TV show chronicling the cross country adventures – amorous and otherwise – of two scathingly handsome guys driving a Corvette convertible. These days, the Route seems favoured by motorcycle groups that don’t hesitate to roar past tour buses. My version of getting kicks on Route 66 consisted of snapping photos out the window and sharpening my gambling skills by playing bingo and swapping casino stories with friends.

• I arrived “home” broke from the money-gobbling slot machines, happily having made new friends, and feeling clean and relaxed. My room, overlooking the Colorado River, did indeed have a most welcoming bathtub and an endless supply of hot water!