Road Trip in California: Highway 178

 Part 2:

The Drive Back:

A few miles west of Ridgecrest is the town of Inyokern where there is a US Naval Base. The town also has a lot of junk yards and antique stores. We stopped briefly to peek at one of these before getting on the road again. 

There is a stretch of Highway 178 that goes from Inyokern crossing over Highway 395 before it joins a section of Highway 14. That relatively small stretch is a thing of beauty to behold : a straight road with a mild upslope towards the west leading up to an imposing wall of the Sierra Nevada mountain range at its far end. I couldn’t keep going without capturing the scene on the camera.

Last Wednesday (Jan 26) our trip back home was after dark.  This time we decided to take that route( Hwy 178)again and enjoy the daytime views. I happily sat as the passenger and had my phone camera on high alert from moment to moment. And truly, what a route it was/is ! 

Where it leaves the brief Highway 14 common segment is where the excitement really starts.My words fail to describe the beauty of this Highway. Although not officially listed in California’s Scenic Highways it definitely is eligible for that designation. 

We carried onwards as the road wrapped around the mountains, passing through the California Desert Preserve, flanked by forests of Joshua trees for miles and miles. A quick eye and quicker click on the phone managed to capture a lone coyote lurking by the road side.

A large part of this desert comes under the California Desert Conservation Area( CDCA). Historically vast areas in the California Desert were exploited for mining. It was only in the past century that the government put in measures to conserve the natural resources and plan for renewable energy. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is involved in the protection of these areas. Earlier in the day we saw miles of solar panel fields on either side of freeway 14. This is all part of the measures undertaken by BLM. 

Again we went over the Walker Pass which is at 5250 feet above sea level in the southern Sierra Nevada range. There was a bit of snow seen from the pass on the higher elevations of the mountains The road wandered briefly into low lying dainty farming towns before climbing again along the South Lake area to the waters of Lake Isabella. There was a lot of construction activity happening near the Lake Isabella Dam. This Dam is a source for electricity and water for California. But it is also a constant threat to Bakersfield where we live. A breach in the dam means Bakersfield will be under water.

The thought about Bakersfield and Lake Isabella made me aware of a strange similarity between two phases of my life. I grew up in Khopoli in Raigad District of Maharashtra on the west coast of India. This is a small inland town nestled in a valley surrounded by the Sahyadri mountains. Higher up on the mountains are several dams . One of those, the Valvan dam is the source of the waters that are led down to the Tata owned hydroelectric plant and thereafter into the Patalganga river. From there I came to live most of my adult life in this small city of Bakersfield in the state of California on the west coast of the USA. This is also an inland town which is surrounded by the Sierra Nevada mountains and high up in the mountains the snow melted waters are collected in the Lake Isabella Reservoir/Dam before being released into the Kern River that flows down the canyon to the Southern California Edison hydroelectric plant located lower down in the canyon before carrying forward through the town of Bakersfield. The geographic similarities are intriguing. 

Interested readers can check the following link to get a glimpse into the history of the canyon road and the power house as well as the relocation of the town of Lake Isabella when the dam and reservoir were constructed.

http://kerncanyon.com/

Driving further west from Lake Isabella we entered the Kern Canyon. This drive through the Kern Canyon is breathtakingly scenic by itself. The rocky cliffs on both sides, glimpses of the river on and off as you turn on the curvy,one-lane road and the play of the shadows around sunset on the canyon are things that you just try to absorb and pack into memory. We emerged out of the canyon to a big surprise. At the far end of a normally majestic view of the city was a glorious sunset happening right at the moment . Indeed the climax to an already fantastic day seemed to be orchestrated by an invisible hand. 

Now a bit about the saree of the day. Remember I had dressed up in a “simpler” saree with a plan to change into a better one for pictures after reaching the park? The initial sample pictures in that travel saree looked so nice that after multiple deliberations in the span of the 3-4 hours we spent at the state park as well as later for the drive home after lunch I decided not to change to another saree after all. This saree had completely exceeded my expectations and in fact made me feel guilty for underestimating it’s plus points. It stayed almost wrinkle free throughout the day. Turned out to be very photogenic and seemed to well complement the varied landscapes around it. Besides, it’s dark shade would forgive any mud marks after posing on the rocks and sand. The “ better” sarees couldn’t have qualified on all these practical grounds. They quietly came back home, crisply ironed, untouched. 

Three cheers to this humble polycot Jagatsingpur saree from Odisha. The deep mehndi green body gets a lift from the bright orange border. Fuchsia in the pallu adds a bit of drama. It has a geometric ikat design on its borders and similar bands of ikat also on the pallu. This too I had bought from a shopkeeper who lost his multi generation owned shop across from the Jagannath Puri temple.