Excursion - part 2

To complete the tale of our adventure away. In the morning, the only thing provided by the motel was coffee. You had to go to reception to get it, so Opa and I set off to reception, to get polystyrene cups which we filled with coffee from Thermos flasks, and non-dairy creamer for those that wanted it. Opa was upset that there was no tea.

We went to Casa Martinez (truck stop and 24 hour cafe) for breakfast - that being the only choice. Oma had a breakfast burrito, which was satisfactory. I was a little nervous that Opa wouldn't find anything to his satisfaction (he usually has tea - made in a saucepan by boiling some teabags, and then putting enormous quantities of sugar in, toast, with a lot of jam, and boiled eggs). He ordered an omelette (with normal toast), and was only slightly disturbed that it came with hash browns. "Potatoes? For breakfast?? Huh." A and D had pancakes and french toast, which they ignored. There was jelly in little tubs, which caused debate with Opa. "What is jelly?" I told him. "No, that is jam. Marmalade". (Confusingly, marmalade is German for jam). It was the cheapest, most disgusting jam I've ever seen. The ingredients to the grape jelly were Glucose Syrup, Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Grape Juice, Pectin, Beetroot color. Opa took them home anyway. (The mixed fruit jam was the same, but with apple juice too).

We had another one of those incidents where I debate with Opa the precise meaning of a word in English. You'd think that I could pull rank and trump him at the same time, what with being a native, and all that. But Opa went to the till and said "I want cash". They didn't understand (which is good, I would have thought I was being robbed). He repeated this. I went to the rescue, and they were successfully paid. We had our debate about the meaning of cash. "Cash means pay". "No, cash means money. Geld. Geld is cash." "Cash is pay. Bezahlen." "Why didn't they understand you?" "I don't know. Cash is pay." I gave up. You have to pick your battles.

We drove in our two car convoy into the National Park. There was a ranger station, with a shop and toilets, where you could buy maps and things, and bottles of water, but no food. (I was kind of expecting them to sell something - but they didn't, so I made a big bag of peanuts last all day.) We paid $15 per car, and set off. If we hadn't needed to go to the toilet, we might not have stopped, and might not have bought our tickets, which might have meant all kinds of trouble.

They gave us maps, and we read about where to see the Joshua trees. And how to distiunguish between the joshua trees and the yuccas, which a lot of people think are joshua trees, but aren't. I wondered how that would damage the experience of having seen a joshua tree. If I thought I'd seen a joshua tree, then I'd be happy, surely? The fact I hadn't wouldn't really be a problem. And were people only interested in the joshua trees because it was called the Joshua Tree National Park? If it was called the Yucca Tree (or plant) National Park (and if U2 had made an album called The Yucca Tree) would people then say "Don't mistake those joshua trees for Yuccas. You want to make sure that you see the genuine Yuccas, not those Joshua imitations." (I just read on Wikipedia that Joshua trees only grown in (and around) Joshua tree national park. Maybe that's why.

The park was big, as you'd expect (even the Peak District National Park is a fair size, and that doesn't have the vastness of America to spread into), and had a 35 or 40 mph speed limit, so we drove with cruise control on, which was quite strange. But it meant you could look around. Our cruise controls in the 2 cars never quite got to the same speed, so after a while we'd be a long way apart.

We stopped at various points to look at interesting stuff. There were an awful lot of interesting places to look at and potter about. There was a cactus garden - I wasn't sure if they cacti had been deliberately planted or not. There was a pond, created by a dam (called Barker Dam) - it seemed quite surprising to me that it had water in it still, but it did. There were lots of big, round granite boulders, created by volcanoes. When a volcano finished erupting, the granite in the spout bit would set solid, and then the volcano (which wasn't as hard) would erode from around it, leaving a heap of round granite rocks.

When we got out of the park, S wanted to go and visit Black Rock Canyon, but we couldn't find it. Well, we sort of found it but it didn't seem to have a canyon, or any black rocks. We might have had to go more than a few feet from the car, but it was late and very nearly dark, so we went home.