Day Three - Felicity to Joshua Tree 

From the centre of the world to a real desert to Bombay and then a greener than expected desert

Our road trip begins in earnest today. That's not a place of course just the feeling we had on checking out of our hotel. We are close to both the Californian and Mexican borders and within around ten minutes cross over into the former. 

First stop is only a short distance away and a place called Felicity recognised by the Imperial County of California and the French Geographic Society as the 'Centre of the World'. This is all down to the single-minded efforts of a French immigrant called Jacques-Andre Istel. He made a lot of money after setting up a parachuting business that recognised the adrenalin rush needed by some Californians and decided to spend some of his wealth on acquiring a sizable plot of land and calling it after his wife Felicity. 

Istel then built a church and began placing large numbers of marble tablets back-to-back, and arranged in triangular shaped rows around the grounds, with inscriptions that provided the story of humanity including religions, arts, world events and America together with information about the history and sport of parachuting. A separate tablet at the entrance to the grounds has a quote from the redoubtable Istel, 'In trust that this summary of human achievement and failure will encourage study of the past, thought for the future and resolve for virtue, in hope that the human race will endure far longer than this stone.' 

I think it is fair to say that we left humbled by this man's work, initiative and dedication.

From a man-made creation that could probably only happen in America, our next stop is to explore the entirely natural landscape of the Imperial Sand Dunes. We follow signs which take us up a steep hill which ends in a tarmacked car park with clearly marked parking bays, a notice that confirms we are only allowed a maximum stay of two hours and a public toilet. In front of us is a desert vista; fiercely bright light, yellow sand that has been shaped into various sizes of dunes and marked with curves and ridges created by the wind into a myriad of patterns. 

We had never been to a desert before, and we stood there in awe of the quite unexpectedly beautiful scene in front of us. It does not appear to be an arid and barren landscape but something akin to a piece of art that reveals more and more of itself as we gaze and find evermore intricacies in the shapes and forms of which it is comprised. That said, it was very, very hot and, despite our cultural and artistic meanderings, of which Brian Sewell would have been proud, we eventually retreated to the cool of the AC in the car.

For our next stop we combined both nature and man's involvement at a place called Bombay Beach. This town became a resort of the Hollywood stars in the 1940s and 50s visited by the likes of Clark Gable and Frank Sinatra. The 'Beach' came about by the diversion of the Colorado River which occurred in part, and at first naturally, and in part by mans' intervention for agricultural purposes. Unfortunately for the bathers, at some point the river became saline and a very high percentage of the fish died because of it. The smell of fish when it goes off, as you know, is not pleasant but you can probably imagine how this event, given the volume that expired coupled with temperatures of around 35C-40C, would have turned the noses of Hollywood's elite. The resort quickly fell into decline and the many hotels and holiday homes were simply abandoned to what became known as the Salton Sea. 

Today Bombay Beach has attracted a small number of probably hipster retirees and people that wish to remove themselves from the norm of town life. They have moved into the fairly run-down properties and begun to put their own unique designs on them. In these temperatures you don't garden in your retirement. Instead, you place rusty vintage cars, plastic cows and such like in your yard as ways of highlighting your individuality and non-corporate, non-compliance. We left wishing them well in their endeavours and thinking there was still a faint smell of fish in the air.

And so on to our first National Park and a chance to flash our newly acquired 'America the Beautiful' pass. Joshua Tree National Park revealed another side, in fact many sides, to a desert environment. 

As we drove through, we witnessed how multi-faceted, what we thought would be an unchanging landscape, actually was. The roadside changed from bare scrubland to rock formations that looked like works of art (I guess Brian Sewell hadn't left us) to wild gardens of cacti in bloom and near forests of Joshua trees. Stopping at one point I spoke with a local. He told me he was a frequent visitor to the park and had never seen it so green due to the recent heavier than usual flash floods. August is known as the 'monsoon' season as it produces the bulk of the annual rainfall but this year had been exceptional, leaving the roads in parts of several national parks in the area under debris or damaged and closed awaiting repair.

And the America the Beautiful pass? We never had to show it.