The Oasis of Mara in the Mojave Desert
We’re at the 29 Palms Inn (historically called the Oasis of Mara) in a hundred something degree weather. Luckily our first couple of days here were overcast so it was only in the 90s. Still too hot for someone used to the 60s and 70s. 
The swamp cooler in our fairly primitive cabin works fine, but we have to battle a few flies and ticks. This is one of our favorite motels. It’s primitive by design. We even have to go outside to use an attached bathroom. It has regular plumbing but no swamp cooler, so it’s like being in a sauna. But we love the place. Sam and Rob sleep in the loft, Jake on a couch, and Lenie and I have a real bed.
The Inn is an oasis in the Mojave Desert. Very old with about a dozen little cabins scattered around it. It has a natural little pond with lots of palm trees, a huge garden that supplies its excellent restaurant, and a pool off the restaurant. We especially like to swim at night as we listen to a musician perform. (I mentioned the trumpeter Bill Church and keyboardist Beverly Derby in a previous blog.) You also often get serenaded at night by a pack of coyotes. We saw a big coyote earlier today–as big as our black lab–just behind our cabin. I’d hate to be stranded in the desert and be surrounded by animals that size.
We got here by traveling Interstate 5 though several hundred miles of California’s San Joaquin (pronounced SAN-WAH-KEEN) Valley, which is always a thrill for me. It is one of the great bread baskets of the world, producing vegetables, fruits, and even beef for most of its length. It is primarily food grown for human consumption, as opposed to the hundreds of miles of Midwest corn we drove through a few weeks ago which is grown mainly for animal consumption.
We left Interstate 5 near Bakersfield, passed through the extraordinary wind farms of the Tehachapi Pass, then began a temperature climb of 20 degrees as we headed towards the Mojave Desert, a hot, unforgiving wasteland that contains Twentynine Palms and other hapless towns. This motel oasis is one of the few livable spots around here as far as I can see, even though there are several nearby cities–Joshua Tree, Yucca Valley, etc.–with tens of thousands of people. Those residents probably came here for the jobs provided by the Marine Corps Base, which most acreage of any base in the country.
This may be our last trip to this part of the world, unless Erik reenlists again and gets stationed back here in the future. I’m looking forward to visiting Annie and Erik at their new home among the relatively lush landscapes of North Carolina near Camp Lejeune. Unfortunately, we’ll probably be seeing less of the grandkids, Olga and Gavin, due to the longer distance involved.
