Bob-Kats on the Road 4-15-11

Very tough leaving Borrego Springs.  Wherever or however Jo was, we were leaving her behind.  I made one last solo visit to the desert behind us and was again stuck by the abundance of life there.  Quail bursting out from bushes as I passed, rabbits everywhere – a baby cottontail ran over my foot.  My old friend Jackrabbit was there as usual being cool.  He thinks if he freezes, he’s invisible.  And there he is --about four feet tall with those impossibly long legs and enormous ears.

The smell was wonderful, a mix of desert-clean and flowers.  There were masses of flowers everywhere.  How could anything bad happen here?

The desert behind the park

Beautiful Anza Borrego

Font’s Point is four miles down a deep sand road.  So much fun in the jeep!  And then when you get to the end, the most amazing view.

Font’s Point

Montezuma Road

Salton Sea in the Background

Henderson Canyon

Flowers, Flowers Everywhere

Teddy bears ready to bloom

Some No Bigger Than a Baby’s Thumbnail

So small . . .

But so numerous they can paint a hillside.

Sahara Mustard

If there is a plant in the world worthy of hatred, Sahara mustard is it.  Poison ivy is annoying, but Sahara mustard is evil.  It was brought in from North Africa on the date palms still evident in Borrego Springs.  The first record of it was in 1927, so it’s a longtime resident.

The plant has tiny unimpressive flowers, no fruit and nothing will eat it.  The roots emit a substance that inhibits other plants from growing around it.  Its large umbrella shape and ability to efficiently remove water and nutrients from the sandy soil further insures that nothing else will grow near it.  A large plant will have 16,000 seeds (did someone count?  Presumably) and it has a very high germination rate.  The seeds become sticky when wet and adhere to the wheels and under-carriages of cars and are spread many miles that way.  The small plants drop seeds into the ground in large numbers forming a huge seed bank, so there will be endless mustard plants popping up with every rain.  The large plants sever at the base and wheel off in the wind to scatter their seeds far and wide.  Already areas that had wild flowers now have nothing but Sahara mustard.  A 2005 study showed California would have to spend $121 million per year just to control the spread of this invasive plant.  Yeah, right, like that is happening.  And the most effective control is hand-pulling of plants.

Bob and I decided to adopt one scenic drive and clean it of mustard.  The plant must be pulled with gloves – another lovely thing, the plant has stinging hairs and your hand will burn after only a few plants – then the roots are cut off and the seed-bearing part put into a plastic bag.  The bumper sticker just says pull, but if you leave the plant intact on the ground, you may even have helped it spread its seed.

Harvested Sahara Mustard

Bob and I worked two hours every day for five days and filled 12 contractor bags full –packed and heavy.  Another lovely thing about mustard – it stinks!  Yech, disgusting. The ride to the dumpster with bags of mustard was LONG!  But it was odd – it was strangely addictive.   Every day at around the same time, it was you want to go pull?  And we were off hunting the big ones.

But when we were finished, beautiful!  One long sweep free of mustard with room for flowers.

Farewell, Anza Borrego

(Bob’s Extra – Laundry duty)

Laundry is a nasty business when you are on the road . . . finding one, hauling baskets and plastic bags there, getting all those quarters and wasting (what seems to be an eternity) precious time watching the minutes click down on washing machines and staring at tumbling dryers.  I thought I had a solution by purchasing 30 pair of underwear for the trip . . . Kat did not implement this solution.  So about every 10 to 12 days we get the DLB’s . . . Dreaded Laundry Blues.

Kat thought she had the solution when she found Laura at the “Wash Tub” in Mission Texas, who not only washed and dried our mess, but professionally folded and packed it for easy transfer to our closets and drawers.  However, Laura had children and refused to travel with us across the US.

When we rolled into Marathon, Texas, the DLB’s struck.  The park only had one operating washer in an un-air-conditioned 3 X 5 closet of a room . . . so off to town we went.  We found a local at the market who declared, “Yup, we got a great little laundromat just down the road but when the surprise hard freeze hit last week, all the water pipes broke . . . there’s just one washer left in town and it’s at the RV park down the road”.

These are pictures of our “Circle Suds Laundromat” in Borrego Springs . . .

Located on Christmas Circle Roundabout

4 of the 7 washers and 4 of the 6 dryers were “out of order”

Well Maintained Washers

Desert Air-Conditioning