Palm Springs has unexpected walls
From the Salton Sea, it was time for me to head north, back to the land of cold white stuff. My allowed time in the States was coming to an end and I needed to be north regardless of what the weather might be. The first stop on the way north was a fairly short hop as I was not in a hurry yet to get back into colder climes. I might as well enjoy the pleasant early spring warmth as much as possible before heading back into early spring snow and chill of late March. Where better to enjoy the weather than Palm Springs?
San Jacinto Mountains
First a quick update since I have not posted in a couple of months. I’m back in Alberta, been moochdocking for a while in return for completing some chores as well as a few tasks on my ‘to do list’. I’ll be catching up again to get you to something closer to recent times. Now, back to March 2023!
I was not going to be glamping in Palm Springs – not my crowd and not in my budget. But you may be surprised that there is actually some decent boondocking within sight of the city lights. Outside of Palm Springs is outside the enclaves of the rich, be they home owners, businesses or RV Parks. Outside is mountains, desolate desert, abandoned bits, and windmills for miles. There are not a lot of people around, so of course this is where I spent most of my time.
The city lights of Palm Springs
When I say “desert”, it really is the edge of the desert I was on. I was camped on the edge of the foothills up a little ways from the valley bottom. The vegetation is already a bit more lush here, and if you walk up into the valley, you start encountering trees. But below me, the scrub lived in the dust storms that were kicked up by strong winds of the early spring storms passing by.
RV in last light
The specific spot we were camped on was in a grey area for camping. Evidently, the Wildland Conservancy owned the Mission Creek Preserve land. They had signs up saying you can’t drive off road here, but there is nothing saying you can’t camp. There was some BLM land mixed in the area. If you want to be sure you can camp, be on those spots.
Mystery Sign leading to a residence
One of our group had advanced scouted the place, picking the spot we were on because no one else was there. The BLM area did have some people scattered about. We decided the ‘grey area risk’ was worth it for having an area to ourselves. While we were there, the Conservancy Ranger truck went by several times, not even slowing down near our group. So, I suspect camping is at least tolerated at this point.
Of course, once our group is sitting there, others see this and come in as well. We had even scattered ourselves apart a bit so we didn’t look like a group, but to no avail. We didn’t have the place to ourselves for long before a van showed up and camped right by the entrance road leading to our spot. It was another one of those people that want to get out there, but are too timid to do more than park just off the main road from civilization.
A second van was bolder and came in driving right by my parking spot, camping kinda on the edge of our group. This was annoying for being closer than they needed to be – there is lots of space. Not to mention, they were miserable. They got into an argument about dog training with one of us, ironic in that their young dog didn’t listen to them at all. They were using a clicker constantly when the dog was doing something they didn’t like. The dog didn’t seem to even notice the clicker so I don’t know what was up with that. I ran into them one day and said ‘Hi’, only to get a sour look in return. The dog was friendly but uncertain, I could see some territorial tendencies that were starting to turn aggressive. Hopefully the dog figures it out on its own – the owner isn’t helping at all. That is the downside of a boondocking spot close to town – you will get other people, with the usual mixture of nice and not so nice. At least the spaces were far enough apart that no one was right on top of you – unless they tried to ‘share’ your spot which was a possibility with some of the bigger ones.
Road heading to the wall start
The area is a former ranch, that had been in the process of being turned into a new suburban neighborhood, but we didn’t know that at first. We could see a lot of scrub and grassland, some of which looked like it had been disturbed by man at some point. The strange thing we could see in the distance was a wall, in the middle of nowhere on the slope leading into the foothills. The wall was so far away we at first thought it was one of those concrete traffic barriers strung out- but distance made it look smaller than the roughly eight foot cinder block wall it really was.
Partial wall, then nothing
Looking on the googles aerial, I could see that the wall far away was the west wall, partially built along the foothills. The south wall had been completed, and part of the east wall, which was closest to our camp was done. The north wall was only a road line looking like about where you’d have a property border here. The west wall in fact turned out to be formerly fenced in barb wire, still present beyond where the developers had gotten building their great wall project. If this is what people want in the USA for communities, perhaps I can see why Trump appealed with his ‘build a wall’ mantra to keep immigrants out – if people think walls keep their neighborhoods safe, why not the whole country?
The other side has less graffiti for sure
Why am I blathering on about walls you wonder? While the ludicrous nature of walling in a huge area that didn’t have anything in it yet is interesting, what is more interesting is what has become of the roughly two kilometers of wall that were completed. Graffiti, two kilometers of it. But what about the other side of the wall? Well, some of it has been done too, but a lot of it is difficult to get to because, wall, and no road access coming to the other side for most of the wall.
Wall just keeps on going and going…
Sober is at the start of the other side. Less as you go down the hill.
If you want to get to wall frontier to have a fresh bit to paint on, you are gonna have to trek over to the other side at one of the wall breaks and trek down to your blank canvas.
This isn’t just a bunch of taggers, most of this is what I would consider ‘art’, some meh, to some really good bits. I’m actually surprised that taggers have not ruined some of the easy to get to parts. There seems to be some respect between lowly taggers and the upper crust ‘artists of the spray’.
Web wall, blends in like a web…
The good stuff wasn’t all in the easy to get to part either – some of best stuff was up in the far south west corner, up against the hill far from the access. Speaking of far, you could walk all of this and I did walk some of the stuff closer to camp. But walking over and then walking up a kilometer, then over, then around the hills they didn’t get to building over was a bit much. The Grom motorcycle was perfect for this adventure, I could follow the rough road beside the wall no problem, and zip over to the next bit of wall I wanted to look at.
The wall south west corner
My one photographic challenge was the good art walls all tended to face into the shadows – north and east. If I was an early riser, I could go get the east wall shots in the rising sun, but I’m not that dedicated for a wall shot. Instead, I over exposed a bit and cropped out the sky as much as possible. With a little post process amping up of the contrast and colors, things come out good enough in my books. Here are a few:
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If you want to see yet more wall pictures, I have created an album on Flickr. There was so much to see. I recommend checking it out if you are in the area. Speaking of which, you can find it by searching for the ‘Nude Bowl‘ on a googles map showing west Palm Springs area. A trek to that will take you right by the south wall on your way to that interestingly named feature that I also visited.
The main attraction is the former pool
The Nude Bowl is a skateboarding local that gets it’s name from being the site of a former nudist resort. During my visit, only BMX bikers were present, riding up and flipping over on the curves of the former pool. Having seen so much wall graffiti on the way there, I was a little underwhelmed by the pool art, but the view from up there is nice.
The upper pad where I presume the house once sat had a bold orange wing chair perched on the edge, looking out at Palm Springs in the distance. The chair was in really good shape, even in the relatively dry desert I can see this only having been there for a short time. The blue sky made for a great contrast with my photo, but I couldn’t help wonder why this chair was there in the first place. Judgement chair for the BMXers below me, and the city way below me came to mind.
Property purchase at the end of the rainbow
The failed development that resulted in the now graffitied partially built wall had some other abandoned features, like the mostly built storm pond. You could see the project had been hastily abandoned, by the supplies left behind to rot. Whole piles of mortar bags left behind, for sale signs, and various bits of underground piping that never got installed. Most of it now is worthless, but for some amusement with the signs.
What was that about your realtor?
To think of the wasted resources: I’d guess the storm pond could be salvaged and the initial earth works and fence might be usable. But I wouldn’t be surprised if a new development were to pop up here it would be with a new plan and they’d start fresh over, bulldozing everything and making the waste complete. But who knows if the land will ever be developed. The Mission Creek Preserve had bought up a corner of the less disturbed land. Perhaps they will buy more just leaving the earth works by the south wall with the storm pond that could be turned into a formal park of some sort. But I’d still bet this will get developed at least in part someday.
I did go visit Mission Creek Preserve a couple of times. You follow a gravel road into a valley leading into the mountains. There are scattered trees and scattered former developments. One former development is supposed to have been a hot pool of some sort. You can still see the pool, and the cool stone cabins are mostly intact. Stone does last a long time. Eventually you come to a parking area and a closed gate. The road continues beyond, but it is not open other than when a group camping function is booked.
It’s not a long walk until you come to more stone cabins, these with the roofs redone. One acts as a shelter, the other is a bathroom for the tenting campground here. The PCT is nearby, some of the hikers come down from the trail to camp at this spot. We were lucky the day we hiked up here, it had rained and the creek was running as a result. It was nice to splash some cold water on us in what was turning into a hot day. Overall, the Preserve has some pretty nice scenery, although we didn’t wander too deep into the park. I’d come back again for some longer hikes to explore some of the higher trails when they are not snowed in.
The one other thing in the area you will see a lot of is windmills. There are many here, with the pass between Palm Springs and Los Angeles channeling the Pacific winds past them. There are various sizes too. While I was there, I saw both dismantling of what I presume was older small windmills, and assembly of new huge windmills. While most of them are out of the way of the residential areas, there was one sparsely built community near a large grouping of these things. I’m not bothered by the sound, but to live with so many of these things in your sight spinning away on a windy day might be kinda annoying after a time?
Unusually snow covered San Bernardino Mountains
But I wasn’t going to find out. It was time for me to part ways with my friends who I had been travelling with on and off over the winter. One last breakfast out and we were off on our separate ways. I have to say, I had to get use to being a nomad again now that I’d been with people so much. I was now pushing my schedule to get back to Canada. I needed to make tracks north fast now. Join my next time, on my way back to the great white north.
