We have lived within 2 miles of the San Andreas Fault for about 15 years and so last week when we decided to get away and see something different, we naturally visited other parts of the SAF.
We first headed to Pinnacles, which is a 23M year old volcano that had the misfortune to be born on top of the SAF near Los Angles. The SAF split the volcano into two and moved the western half 145 miles northwest where it sits just outside of Soledad and is now a National Monument. The eastern half remains near Los Angles, just south of Lake Elizabeth (the home of fearsome cat hating ducks) on private land and is mostly eroded away but you can identify rock features shared by the east and west half.
The west half, Pinnacles, is the nominal home of about half the wild condors in California, but we didn’t see any during our short hike to Balconies cave, which seemed to be closed due to rock falls, although the Park Rangers seem to think it is passable. The trail was littered with chestnuts … Colossal Chestnuts to be precise and they were quite large but as you are not supposed to hunt and gather in the Monument we left them lay.
As I had done the previous week on a walk near our home, I nearly trod on a small snake when I stopped to take a picture. We were not able to identify the first snake and because, as you know, any unidentified snake west of the Mississippi is called a rattlesnake, it was a narrow and lucky escape for me. I made a mistake of taking a picture of the Pinnacles snake which looked just like the first snake and later I found out it was a gopher snake, which isn’t nearly as good a story as rattlesnake. This time Cyndi said “everytime you stop there is a snake next to you” and I looked at her for a couple beats and said “Yes, I know”. She wasn’t terribly offended as she claims snakes are her power animal but she didn’t much care for the real snakes sunning in the paths.
The next day we went to the Carrizo Plain National Monument, which is maybe 75 or a 100 miles further south along the fault. Don’t worry, no one else has heard of it either. It is a quite lovely large and extremely arid area between a couple of small mountain ranges, about an hour east of Hwy 101 and an hour west of I-5. We where probably the only visitors that day and possibly for the week. When we first arrived, Motorcycle Dave immediately found us and spent about 15 minutes talking to us. Not so much listening tho. Dave has lived on the Plain for 30 years. There are not many people on the Plain and Dave was lonely. But not crazy, which was a relief.
Dave told us about the plans to build a huge solar panel array on the Plain and Dave wasn’t happy about it. From what I could tell, Dave was mostly upset about the visual impact the array would have but also talked about environmental impacts. He thought the environmental impacts could be better handled in the Central Valley and, well, nothing can diminish the beauty of the rather unbeautiful Central Valley.
Later we found the park ranger cleaning out the Education Building and asked her what the BLM thought about the solar panels. Her husband, helping her in the background, immediately adopted a warning-warning posture and kept repeating “No Comment. No Comment”. The ranger agreed the BLM had no comment and rather carefully talked about it. Her personal opinion was that the panels would be better off on the tops of buildings in the cities and had some environmental concerns but said it was mostly a not-in-my-backyard reaction.
The Plain has been the home to several previous failed solar projects. The Walton family (of WalMart fame) are behind the project and have had some success elsewhere. The Waltons have managed (or are attempting) to obtain stimulus money to guarantee the project … that is, there is virtually no risk for them but they would get any profits. I guess I object to this part.
Back to the Plain. In the center of the Plain is Soda Lake. There is no drainage out of the Plain and the couple inches of rain annually end up in Soda Lake where of course they evaporate and leave unusable salts and generally screw up the ground water. All the few residents of the Plain haul their water home from the Fire Station, which is managed by the county government and according to Motorcycle Dave, the county will cut off your water if you disagree with their policies, like approving solar projects. Motorcycle Dave seemed to have some first hand experience here.
Migratory birds use Soda Lake in the winter during the rains. The rains also bring wildflowers in the spring. The birds and wildflowers then bring visitors. The ranger explained we were actually in the pre-season and managed to do so without making us feel entirely stupid. She even gave us the Wildflower Watch web site and invited us back in March to see the flowers … that is, if they get some rain and it doesn’t get too cold.
The San Andreas Fault lies on the eastern side of the Plain and is fairly obvious and in places dramatic. Scattered across the plain are generally failed homesteads and abandoned fields and weird non-functional artifacts. A couple of golden eagles chased kangaroo rats, who spent most of their time scurrying from hole to hole. Unseen redwing blackbirds warbled occasionally. A reflected Temblor range raced along side of us in a thin layer of water on top of the lower soda lake, contrasting interestingly with the otherwise very static scenery. A front was moving in and brought enough moisture to the upper atmosphere to make it a spectacular contrail day. Carrizo Plains has a beauty enhanced by contrails.
This ride from 101 to I5 is through some of the loveliest country in California with grasslands covering smooth folded rolling hillsides and yellowing willows tracing winding arroyos. A bit outside of Santa Margarita is either a retirement home for Hawaiian shirts or a grim warning for trespassing tourists. In McKittrick we got stopped by a road crew and as we were waiting we noticed the flagger’s truck had Hazardous Spill Response Team printed on the side. We were about to turn and run away when we got flagged through. They were laying asphalt but it wasn’t clear if this was to cover a spill or if the truck did double duty. The road was in good shape and didn’t seem to need to be re-paved.
A few other random events from the trip
We first headed to Pinnacles, which is a 23M year old volcano that had the misfortune to be born on top of the SAF near Los Angles. The SAF split the volcano into two and moved the western half 145 miles northwest where it sits just outside of Soledad and is now a National Monument. The eastern half remains near Los Angles, just south of Lake Elizabeth (the home of fearsome cat hating ducks) on private land and is mostly eroded away but you can identify rock features shared by the east and west half.
The west half, Pinnacles, is the nominal home of about half the wild condors in California, but we didn’t see any during our short hike to Balconies cave, which seemed to be closed due to rock falls, although the Park Rangers seem to think it is passable. The trail was littered with chestnuts … Colossal Chestnuts to be precise and they were quite large but as you are not supposed to hunt and gather in the Monument we left them lay.As I had done the previous week on a walk near our home, I nearly trod on a small snake when I stopped to take a picture. We were not able to identify the first snake and because, as you know, any unidentified snake west of the Mississippi is called a rattlesnake, it was a narrow and lucky escape for me. I made a mistake of taking a picture of the Pinnacles snake which looked just like the first snake and later I found out it was a gopher snake, which isn’t nearly as good a story as rattlesnake. This time Cyndi said “everytime you stop there is a snake next to you” and I looked at her for a couple beats and said “Yes, I know”. She wasn’t terribly offended as she claims snakes are her power animal but she didn’t much care for the real snakes sunning in the paths.
The next day we went to the Carrizo Plain National Monument, which is maybe 75 or a 100 miles further south along the fault. Don’t worry, no one else has heard of it either. It is a quite lovely large and extremely arid area between a couple of small mountain ranges, about an hour east of Hwy 101 and an hour west of I-5. We where probably the only visitors that day and possibly for the week. When we first arrived, Motorcycle Dave immediately found us and spent about 15 minutes talking to us. Not so much listening tho. Dave has lived on the Plain for 30 years. There are not many people on the Plain and Dave was lonely. But not crazy, which was a relief.Dave told us about the plans to build a huge solar panel array on the Plain and Dave wasn’t happy about it. From what I could tell, Dave was mostly upset about the visual impact the array would have but also talked about environmental impacts. He thought the environmental impacts could be better handled in the Central Valley and, well, nothing can diminish the beauty of the rather unbeautiful Central Valley.
Later we found the park ranger cleaning out the Education Building and asked her what the BLM thought about the solar panels. Her husband, helping her in the background, immediately adopted a warning-warning posture and kept repeating “No Comment. No Comment”. The ranger agreed the BLM had no comment and rather carefully talked about it. Her personal opinion was that the panels would be better off on the tops of buildings in the cities and had some environmental concerns but said it was mostly a not-in-my-backyard reaction.
The Plain has been the home to several previous failed solar projects. The Walton family (of WalMart fame) are behind the project and have had some success elsewhere. The Waltons have managed (or are attempting) to obtain stimulus money to guarantee the project … that is, there is virtually no risk for them but they would get any profits. I guess I object to this part.
Back to the Plain. In the center of the Plain is Soda Lake. There is no drainage out of the Plain and the couple inches of rain annually end up in Soda Lake where of course they evaporate and leave unusable salts and generally screw up the ground water. All the few residents of the Plain haul their water home from the Fire Station, which is managed by the county government and according to Motorcycle Dave, the county will cut off your water if you disagree with their policies, like approving solar projects. Motorcycle Dave seemed to have some first hand experience here.
Migratory birds use Soda Lake in the winter during the rains. The rains also bring wildflowers in the spring. The birds and wildflowers then bring visitors. The ranger explained we were actually in the pre-season and managed to do so without making us feel entirely stupid. She even gave us the Wildflower Watch web site and invited us back in March to see the flowers … that is, if they get some rain and it doesn’t get too cold.
The San Andreas Fault lies on the eastern side of the Plain and is fairly obvious and in places dramatic. Scattered across the plain are generally failed homesteads and abandoned fields and weird non-functional artifacts. A couple of golden eagles chased kangaroo rats, who spent most of their time scurrying from hole to hole. Unseen redwing blackbirds warbled occasionally. A reflected Temblor range raced along side of us in a thin layer of water on top of the lower soda lake, contrasting interestingly with the otherwise very static scenery. A front was moving in and brought enough moisture to the upper atmosphere to make it a spectacular contrail day. Carrizo Plains has a beauty enhanced by contrails.
This ride from 101 to I5 is through some of the loveliest country in California with grasslands covering smooth folded rolling hillsides and yellowing willows tracing winding arroyos. A bit outside of Santa Margarita is either a retirement home for Hawaiian shirts or a grim warning for trespassing tourists. In McKittrick we got stopped by a road crew and as we were waiting we noticed the flagger’s truck had Hazardous Spill Response Team printed on the side. We were about to turn and run away when we got flagged through. They were laying asphalt but it wasn’t clear if this was to cover a spill or if the truck did double duty. The road was in good shape and didn’t seem to need to be re-paved.A few other random events from the trip
- We naturally started off seeing Olga and getting caffeinated. Olga talked about the large number of books they have at home and that they read much of the time. I asked what she read and she was a bit embarrassed, saying she was reading trash right now. When pressed, Olga said she was reading Somerset Maugham and all this endeared her even more to me.
- We ate at Dan’s The Grub Shack in Atascadero … very new, very small, very casual, inexpensive and very good food … I had the best chicken I ever ate. I wasn’t able to determine why the The is in the name. Dan and his wife are very (overly) friendly and eager. Neither had heard of Carrizo Plains, which is only about an hour away and they thought it peculiar we were going there. People turn left slowly in Atascadero, painfully slow and not even that safely.
- In Soledad our former favorite Playa Azul has shut down, so we had lunch at the only non-fast food place we found open and it was better than anticipated. The staff was surprisingly competent and the greens where especially good, which should be expected in Salinas Valley but you don’t always get. The restaurant had strange acoustics: they had two radios and a tv playing, refrigeration noise, several tables of conversation and an occasional hollering kid … all of which should have resulted in a din but instead I could hear each noise and voice clearly and distinctly. I could even hear the filling of soda glasses from across the room about 40 feet away. It felt like one of those museum exhibits where someone whispers at one end of a noisy hall and you can hear them if you stand in exactly the right spot at the other end of the hall. I’d go back again just to listen.