Wanderlust, Part II

I was rudely awakened just at dawn the next morning by the pungent, permeating smell of agricultural chemicals. I squinted out the window of the Sedan, trying to see well enough through sleepy myopic eyes to find the source of the odor. I was surrounded by orchards, and a lake of chemical fog hung over the trees. I was suffocating under the surface. There was still no activity at the airport, so the spray aircraft had to be coming from some other site. I scrambled into my clothes, trotted across the tarmack to a water spigot on the side of a building, washed my face, put in my "eyes" (my contact lenses), preflighted, and got the heck out of Dodge.

Next stop was the Barstow/Daggett Airport, an old military installation from World War II. The wind always whips up the sand there, and the heat made the buildings waiver in a mirage. I taxied my old girl very cautiously in a nasty crosswind, and found a protected spot behind a large open hangar to wait for the fuel truck. Several large military aircraft landed and taxied by me while I stood holding on to the rocking Sedan, wind whipping my hair into snarls. With the Sedan's thirst quenched, I went inside the line shack to pay the bill and buy a large bottle of water for myself. I wasn't very hungry, but ate a banana and drank enough water to last me to the next stop (not so much that I might have to answer the call of nature while strapped into the pilot's seat, which is always an interesting situation for a woman). With a strong west headwind, the Sedan lifted off in only a few hundred feet of runway, and when I turned east, the wind scooted me like a dried leaf blowing across the sand. I quickly climbed to get out of the worst turbulence, and followed the highway toward Needles.

The desert from Barstow to Needles is not a particularly interesting stretch to travel by car, but from the perspective of a high-flying bird, is quite beautiful. There are rugged peaks both north and south, and a site on the north side of the highway where ancient man was discovered to have lived thousands of years ago. The rocks are nothing like those in the Utah desert, but instead are more muted hues of chocolate, plum, and buckskin. There are no windcarved arches and caves, but tumbles of broken rock that look like random slag heaps from a gigantic ore processing plant. The last twenty miles or so were one long scrubland descent to Needles, on the banks of the Colorado River.

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