Adin Supply

Adin Supply is one of the main reasons to travel to towns in sparsely populated territory. Everything you can and cannot imagine is for sale: blouses, boots, bears stuffed, and bowls; canned goods, cookie jars, and kerosene lamps; straw hats, snowshoes, T-shirts, and vases; faux Christmas trees, wastebaskets, and lunch boxes designed by coke. And customer-friendly people.

In 2003 I commented to Dick Campbell, the then owner, "This town seems to be doing well." Adin is at the eastern end of the Pit River's Big Valley, where highways 139 and 299 intersect in California's northeast province. Big trees line a long main street and a nice park rests off to one side.

"Not so, he replied, "all the lumber mills have moved out of Big Valley. There are only ranching and alfalfa left."

"Well, at least, this is a great store."

"Yes, but I'm trying to sell it. there is not enough income in the valley to pay for it. If you ran it yourself, you could make a living, but we are 72."

In 2004 the Campbell's sold Adin Supply to Steve and Julie Gagnon. In 2007 the parking lot was full of motorcycles and RVs. A good combo-clientele for a supplier of small town goods in an area whose net valley product is in decline.

Portland Grain Elevator

Beyond a field of blue, yellow, red, and white flowers is a message. You can't read it. People have painted over it, blacked it out. They did it in a hurry, you can tell. What used to be a message is framed by a rectangle open to the heavens above. It's a four-starred incomplete rectangle. The message is on a building across the river from downtown Portland, a building that stores the harvest of ... of what? That's the reason you'd like to know what used to be written there, a message no longer decipherable. Once upon a time it stored grain, that's for sure, but now its contents are obscure. Does it now store genetically engineered food of the gods, calories that perhaps could make you immortal? One of the main points of buildings is to be clear--what it is, who built it and why, what it stands for, like the solidity of old banks said, "We are reliable." But here is no transparency. The building is just by the river, near the Interstate, where waves of cars roll on by.

Just Stuff

The road from Surprise Valley over Fandango Pass lets you down gently in New Pine Creek, astraddle north-south Highway 395 running down the east side of the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada from Canada almost to Mexico, and astraddle the east-west running state line, more in Oregon than California. The town has collected existence and stored it everywhere, in whatnots and in roosters and ravens made of whatnot, in homes and front yards of whatnot. In the center of town is Just Stuff, where things used by the past to bring order are jammed up against one another, pots to pot and chair to chair, so the present can reach in, pick out, and buy to order the future.

The store is justly famous, for it was here early in the twenty-first century that the owner first proclaimed the Gospel According to Just Stuff. "I run this by myself, "just an old gal like me. Mom had it when she was a girl. You'd better believe I have a lot of stuff. I'd better have a lot of stuff if I'm going to make it in this business, and a lot for every different taste."

Morongo Basin

Morongo Basin lies on both sides of Highway 62 as it runs from Twentynine Palms to Morongo Valley. Twentynine Palms, with its Marine Base to the north, Joshua Tree National Park Visitor Center to the south, and a flood control canal right through the middle, is far too clean-safe to be a B-West town. I would give it a rating of no more than a 1 1/2 (although I admit I haven't checked out 29 Palms Inn).

Yucca Valley and Joshua Tree (the town, not the park) are, however, solid 3-out-of-5s. Ricochet is the reason to go to Joshua Tree.
Store = Ricochet
If Ricochet doesn't have the thing you are looking for, it's arguable the category doesn't exist. It is a veritable solar system of stuff, stuffed tight into a tiny niche snug enough for a clutterist like me--clothes and carrots, cappuccino and ice cream, news and newspapers, works of art and soft cheese, wine for drinking and boots for walking.

Up the road going west is Yucca Valley.
Town = Yucca Valley
It's best to admit right off that sometimes you find A-West items in B-West places. Such is the case inside Water Canyon Coffee Company.
Cafe = Water Canyon Coffee Company
Organic coffee ground on the spot and three places to sip it, outside (where tires on macadam make considerable noise), on the ground floor where they grind the beans, and upstairs on an inside balcony where the LATimes is likely to be lying around. All this is nice, but the reason to go is the bran carrot muffin with walnuts on top. It's shipped in from a bakery in Palm Desert, refrigerated and wrapped in plastic, all of which says, "Don't buy me." But do anyway.

Close by, on the same side of the street, is New Age Concepts.
Store = New Age Concepts
This store is the spiritual twin of Ricochet. The religion that can't be found here may not exist. Varieties of Buddhism, Tibetan and otherwise, versions of Christianity, denominations out of the Near East, Greece, Persia and Egypt. The incense of the place is a tribute to the globalization of religion, all this in a desert town far out on the skirts of Los Angeles.

Around a big curve on Highway 62 and a coast downhill is Big Morongo Canyon Preserve.
Preserve = Big Morongo Canyon Preserve
Park = Covington Park
Together with adjacent Covington Park it is a stopover for spring migrating birds and a gathering spot for members of the American Volkessport Association. From the warning signs it is apparent that cougars find Big Morongo Canyon a good hunting Preserve. A raised boardwalk meanders through an almost waterless marsh and well maintained trails head out into the desert and up the canyon sides. Workers weed cut invasive grasses that provide fodder for hot weather fires. Big Morongo and Covington are ideal plots to test the difference between preserve and park.

Circumdrive = Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms, North Entrance Station, Skull Rock, Barker Dam, West Exit Station

Film Crew at Barker Dam

We drove our Dodge truck with its Pilgrim cab-over camper in the West Entrance of Joshua Tree National Park, flashed our Golden Age Pass, and followed the signs to Barker Dam. We angled the Dakota away from the sun and started up the trail. We made minimum progress because of all the new flowers we hadn't identified, such as Wallace's woolly daisy, slender-flowered gilia, white layia, and desert rock pea. It took us nearly an hour to go less than a half mile to the dam-site.

A film crew from Lavender Diamond had arrived not long before we did. The camera woman had stationed herself on a rock, so she could shoot from above, and the director was busy demonstrating to the solo actor the dance she was to perform. Jeannette said, "Take all the pictures you want. They are in a public place." So they were, and so I did, of three takes of a slender young woman flowing to the water's edge on tiptoes.

Overview

I got the idea of B-West from the B-Westerns I watched back in the 1940s in Brinkley, Arkansas. Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger, all of them and more. B-Westerns were a subset of B-Movies, those shorter, budget films made to accompany A-Movies in a double feature. By the time I was old enough to spend Saturdays at the "show house," as it was locally sometimes called by kids my age, both films in the double-header were westerns. B-Westerns were not A-Westerns, the Durango Kid was not Gary Cooper, and the B-West is not Yosemite or Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, not San Francisco, LA, Seattle, Phoenix or Denver.

Joshua Tree National Park and the town of Yucca Valley in the Morongo Basin are the B-West, not less than a 2 out of 5, not more than a 4. Jeannette and I just got back from 5 nights in Joshua Tree's Black Rock campground. In the Visitor Center near the West Entrance Station I picked up a copy of Field Guide to California published by the National Audubon Society, thumbed through the pages quickly, and decided on the spot to do a blogspot with the title Field Guide to the B-West.B-West contains Overviews from different elevations, from way high up in the sky, like this one, down to mountains and hills, like from the mid-level ranges that surround the Morongo Basin. It also consists of Sights and Sightings, organized by categories: towns, stores, and cafes; parks, birds, rocks and flowers; events, doings, and happenings; fights, with good guys & gals and bad guys & gals, over issues, like water and energy.