The Other Side of The Canal

I had wanted to visit East Jesus while I was here, but various dark mutterings by campers in our section of Area 10 had warned me away.  I should have just laced up my shoes and walked over there.  I am a Burner and a Black Rockan . . .I am not afraid of freaks who play with fire, why should I have been timid about meeting the freaks of East Jesus?

But somehow it never happened.  Until, that is, Wednesday.  One of our highly respected senior campers is Chili Bob.  He is known to give tours of the area to show people the interesting things in and around Slab City.  The other morning when I took him a cinnamon orange roll fresh out of KD's oven, we chatted a bit.  I asked him how far away the ordnance was that we were hearing, the weapons fire and enormous booms.  He said they were probably many miles away, and reminded me that sound travels fantastically far out here in the desert.  He asked if I'd ever been on the other side of the canal, and when I told him no, he said to come get him around 9 or 10 the next morning, and he would take us to see part of the military training facility that headquarters much of the activity taking place on the Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range.

And so, Wednesday morning we loaded up for the tour.

First we went across the canal (where I'd never been), through the Slab City golf course, 18 holes amid the rocks and brush, each hole marked with a tall, brightly colored flag, and balls painted neon colors to help in spotting them in the dun landscape.  There were golfers out there, and keepers who take it upon themselves to do the work of keeping the course in good order.  Then we were onto the perimeter road which runs along the military controlled land.  I was surprised to see little in the way of fencing, but there were many signs posted all along the berm of the road warning of danger from unexploded ordnance and making it plain that entry was forbidden.  In other places there were rolls of razor wire and concrete barriers, big tires and earth berms that demarked smaller ranges used for handheld weapons practice.

This perimeter road was well maintained, and we rode along in Chili Bob's capable Suzuki Sidekick which skipped nimbly over the rocks and ruts.  At one point we left the main road to explore another loop, washy and drifted with loose sand and gravel, where it was more important to be careful to not get stuck.  Chili Bob told us stories about getting stuck out there, once in a big mound that rattle snakes had made in the middle of one little used road.  The car dropped to the frame, and he had to call Seann to pull him out.  He told us about the various roads, where some of them went, including one that we could see arrowing away ahead of us, straight up into the Chocolate Mountains. 

It was a perfect morning to be in the desert on the back roads.  Brilliant sun and the air with that sweet, clean desert scent, a boundless blue sky all around.  I was seized by the old desire to go further out, to see where the road led, to get far into the back country where there is nothing around but desert and mountains.  But this area is in some ways more remote than other desert places I've been accustom to go wheeling in, and it would be a good idea to go with an experienced desert rat who knew the country.  Chili Bob said he planned to go out with just such a person one of these days.  Maybe next year I'll make it a point to go on a real 4 wheeling expedition with someone who knows the area.

But today we contented ourselves with exploring a few loops of road that Chili Bob hadn't yet been on, until we found ourselves back on the main perimeter road that skirts the gunnery range.  From there we headed back toward the canal, and Bob showed us the old earthen canal which was replaced by a concrete lined channel when it was apparent the earthen one wasted too much water.  The old canal bed still has water in it, and is choked with salt cedar, an invasive species that was brought in because of its beautiful pale rosy flowers.  It fills the waterways and sucks up thousands of gallons of water, crowding out all the other native species and upsetting the natural biome of the desert.  It is being battled in Colorado with a beetle which has been introduced to take it out, and the insect is making its way down toward the Salton Sea and will eventually (so the thinking goes), be successful in finally controlling the pesky salt cedar.

We reached the entrance to the training base, and stopped to take pictures of the sign, which was rather forlornly stuck in the ground without much in the way of an eye to making a tidy entrance.

Around a corner we could see the gate and a collection of buildings that made up the special forces desert training complex.

There was a fearsome looking barrier that was closer to us than the gate shown above.



It's really not the sort of place you want to go knocking on the gate, so we took a couple of quick pictures from a safe distance and then hastily left.

Back along the canal we saw wildlife watering ponds that are supplied from the canal.  They are small ponds that get a continuous stream of water, keeping them fresh.  They are in place to give wildlife an alternative to getting into the canal and contaminating the water or drowning.  I wanted to get a picture of one, but we were moving along too fast for me to do that. 

There were hidden thickets of salt cedar and palo verde, with some kind of palm growing sporadically mixed in.  Little almost hidden pockets of greenery, some of which had been taken by people who had been living there for many years.

Then we headed back to Slab City, and Chili Bob asked us if we had been to East Jesus. We said no, so he swung in that direction.