The Virginia Nomad: Nomads, days 23 and 24 (9/25/2023)

On the road again. We left Long Beach. Here what we did the first two days on our return trip:

Day 23: Long Beach – Barstow – Kingman (AZ)

Day 24: Kingman – Grand Canyon – Flagstaff

Leaving the LA area made us realize that we had spent a week in polluted air. Driving the freeway out of the basin you could see the haze and we clearly broke out of it when we popped into the surrounding hills. According to the air quality apps the air was relatively clean; however, two days after we left our daughter texted us the latest updates and the air quality had deteriorated substantially. We had been in luck, folks told us, no Santa Anita winds and reasonably clean air. It had been relatively cool (low 70s) in what we had been told, the hottest period of the year.

When we left Long Beach for Kingman I had set the gps on my phone to drive via Palm Springs and Johsua Tree National Park. Unbeknownst to us our GPS reset itself to take the shortest route via Barstow (leave it to Google). This was somewhat upsetting to us since we drove down this way and we both hate to backtrack. However, it is the shortest way and we got to enjoy Interstate 40 (I-40) in its whole glory. Boy, what a terrible road that is! However, some 20 miles outside Barstow, we got to enjoy the Mohave desert in its full glory: hot, and sandy, with a lave field interspersed. Eventually the ocotillo cacti started coming in, indicating that we were entering or maybe approaching the Sonoran or sometimes called the Colorado desert. I had a ball, since I was trained as an arid land (desert) ecologist.

The highway follows the original Route 66 (yes, from the song), and this was fun as well, since we lived along it in Gallup, New Mexico, some 30 years ago. We were reminded of Route 66 all over Kingman.

That night it drizzled for a large part of the evening, and somewhat to my surprise the world still felt dry. You could hardly see the impact of the drizzle on the ground. “I am really back in the desert,” was my first reaction. On our way to the Grand Canyon the weather got increasingly worse, which somewhat in hindsight could be contributed to orographic lift, at least the wind direction was correct to attribute it to this phenomenon. It was off-and-on pouring in the National Park and the canyon was filled with aa dense fog. You could not see the other side, nor the bottom. Still, it was nice to see and be there.

Getting away from the canyon, the weather became remarkably better and once arrived in Flagstaff the sun was out. We tried to make a campfire, failed miserably but went to bed well satisfied. It was nice to be back on the road again, but this time it was in the direction home.