Sand to Snow National Monument

August 10, 2026 / bigdiff / Leave a comment

As the name suggests, this California preserve includes diverse ecosystems from the Colorado and Mojave Deserts to San Gorgonio Mountain. The passes have long been used by Native Americans, and the monument sits just north of the Morongo Reservation. So the area protects both diverse species and cultural heritage.

Jointly managed by the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, this land connects Joshua Tree with the San Bernardino National Forest and helps close the gap with the Santa Rosa & San Jacinto National Monument. While I-10 cuts between the two monuments, it’s not difficult to imagine a wildlife corridor being built over or under I-10 here someday, similar to the new 101 wildlife crossing near Santa Monica. There are existing I-10 underpasses in Arizona and New Mexico with plans for more.

I was curious about the nearby town on I-10 called Whitewater. Turns out the Whitewater River runs through the monument and picks up white silt in the sandy canyon. So, there’s no whitewater rafting on the river, although recent flash flooding closed a couple trails. The headwaters and upper reach is designated a wild & scenic river, then it turns into a recreational river in the wilderness, then flows through the monument and ends up in the Salton Sea.

While the national monument is fairly new, much of the land has been protected by environmental groups who negotiated donations to protect the area forever. The cabin above is a ranger station in a pretty campground in the canyon. It’s nice to know that there are such lovely places just off the interstate.

Carrizo Plain National Monument

August 5, 2026August 5, 2026 / bigdiff / Leave a comment

This month I’m posting my spring visits to national monuments and recreation areas in California, slowly working my way north.

Soda Lake above dries out each summer, leaving alkaline deposits that look like baking soda. The plain is best known for occasional super blooms in April attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors. But the roads are poor, so some folks get stuck in the soft mud in this remote area of coastal California ($1,200 bucks to retrieve your vehicle). The Bureau of Land Management runs a seasonal visitor center from December through May, with exhibits and very helpful staff who can tell you if the petroglyph area is open or not. If you plan to see the wildflowers, definitely call ahead to get the latest info on both the blooms and the roads.

I came early this year after a nice dry stretch while the lake was full and the land was still green and drove all over the place without seeing another person. I saw several golden eagles and watched a small flock of curlew land beside me to peck around with their long thin curved beaks. Geology students often come out to drive along the Dragon’s Back and take photos where Wallace Creek is sharply diverted by the San Andreas Fault, which runs between the seasonal lake and the Temblor Range in the photo above left.

Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument

August 3, 2026 / bigdiff / Leave a comment

Palm Canyon is part of Indian Canyons, managed by the Agua Caliente Band of Coahuila Indians near Palm Springs, California. Despite some recent fire damage, the trail is still quite beautiful especially in the morning. Palm Canyon Creek is a Wild and Scenic River further upstream, although the upper trail was closed when I visited. The canyon is definitely worth paying for parking and visiting the fine trading post too, although even in winter, the area is quite hot by midday.

Some years ago, I took my family up on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, which has a good view of the north part of this Bureau of Land Management monument. But this trip I enjoyed hiking into the canyon to see the largest oasis grove of shaggy California fan palms. It’s a magical spot with birds zipping between the trees, butterflies and even a coyote seeking water.

Bagdad Cafe

July 29, 2026 / bigdiff / 1 Comment

The 1987 cult classic film Bagdad Cafe was filmed in the California desert on Route 66. If you’ve seen it, you likely remember the lonely song “Calling You”, the quirky characters and the dusty location. I’m going to write about the movie, rather than describe the tens of millions of acres of the National Conservation Lands of the California Desert including the Mojave Trails and many large wilderness areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management, because the movie captures the weird, lonesome feeling of the desert and its ghost towns better than I can.

Carson McCullers wrote a novella called The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, which, along with the landscape, inspired a German director, Percy Adlon, to create this movie. He wrote a completely new script and renamed the cafe after a nearby ghost town in order to introduce a bit of magic into the story.

Here’s a hint for folks who may have missed the Aladdin connection. Instead of a magic lamp, a thief from Bagdad steals a gold colored coffee thermos from a German tourist named Jasmin. Trapped in the cafe (after being abandoned by her husband), Jasmin works her magic like a genie on three sad cafe folk: a piano player, an artist and the owner.

The film was a hit in the director’s home country of Germany and elsewhere in Europe, and bus loads of French tourists still frequently stop here to buy souvenirs. The movie was made into a TV show starring Whoopi Goldberg and Jean Stapleton, which didn’t do very well, because the adaptation removed both the magic and the whole ‘lonesome desert’ angle, by making the cafe busy and turning the characters into excellent communicators. Miscommunication among misfits is central to the film, as is the sparsely populated desert backdrop.

Sadly, the owner of the Bagdad Cafe just died, and I don’t know how long they’ll stay open, with I-10 no longer following the historic Route 66 past here and with the cafe known for a 40 year old movie. I’ve driven through many of these ghost towns and isolated places headed that way, and I often wonder what kind of dreams—broken or crazy—drove people to try to build lives out here in the middle of nowhere. Still, you never know about places like this; they may last another 40 years. I think the emptiness of the desert gives people a chance to live a different life than the routines and social norms in which most people are stuck. Anyway, watch the film, which conveys more than I can.

Mojave Trails from Amboy to Zzyzx

July 27, 2026 / bigdiff / 1 Comment

Mojave Trails National Monument lies south of Mojave National Preserve and includes a section of 100 year old Route 66 in southern California. But the broader East Mojave Heritage Trails extend through both areas and far beyond, north to the Kingston Range near the Nevada border, east to the Dead Mountains Wilderness near Needles, and south to Sheephole Valley, Old Woman and Turtle Mountains wildernesses. Many of the trails follow the old Spanish trails and Native American routes through passes to water sources. Until this trip, I didn’t realize that California has more desert lands than Arizona, that there were so many huge wilderness conservation lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, or just how diverse the landscapes are. Even without a four wheel drive off road vehicle, you can see Kelso Dunes, Soda Lake, and hike to lava tubes.

The monument has a stretch of ten whistle stop towns named alphabetically starting with Amboy, known for its volcanic crater above. The 250’ high crater can be hiked, but I just wandered around the viewing area nearby. Most of these towns have since returned to dust, but Roy’s Cafe is still open in Amboy, thanks to the son of a chicken chain owner who bought the town decades ago. I enjoy visiting ghost towns and dusty old cafes in the middle of nowhere, and California’s Route 66 has several photogenic spots. I’ll write about my favorite one next time.

If you’ve ever driven I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, you may have wondered about the exit for Zzyzx. Zzyzx was created as a health treatment by a radio conman in the 1940s on the shore of Soda Lake in the Mojave Desert. He developed an oasis resort and sold his salty cure-all by mail nationwide, until he ran into some legal trouble in the 1970s. Now most of the area is within the Mojave National Preserve, and a local college uses the buildings, but it’s still a beautiful spot not to be missed.

Kern Wild & Scenic River

July 15, 2026August 10, 2026 / bigdiff / 1 Comment

This is a fun river up in the Sequoia National Forest above Bakersfield California, with various rafting trips both above and below the Lake Isabella Dam. The north fork of the river starts up in Sequoia National Park and includes much more challenging whitewater. Kernville, where most float trips meet, is a cute town with some good places to eat, and it makes a good stop if you’re heading up this way to Giant Sequoia NM or Kings Canyon. The south fork travels through some wilderness and has an Audubon Preserve for birds. Nice area to retire in if you travel to a lot of national parks by EV.

Giant Sequoia National Monument

July 13, 2026July 22, 2026 / bigdiff / 2 Comments

The US Forest Service manages this national monument inside the Sequoia National Forest in California. I took the photo on the popular Trail of 100 Giants in the south part of the monument, and you can see some of the fire damage from many huge carbon-pollution driven wildfires. Outside the monument, the devastation is far worse, and I drove through over 30 miles of fatally burned trees to get to the protected Giant Sequoia grove above.

Despite all the fossil fuel and timber industry attempts to avoid talking about the actual cause of the unprecedented new age of fire, it’s very clear that the climate surrounding these groves has changed dramatically due to man. The snow is on the ground for a much shorter period of time, the air and soil are drier, the temperature is higher and there’s even more wind and lightning. These trees evolved for cold, high altitude winters with lots of runoff all year long from snowmelt. On a hot day, a mature Giant Sequoia needs to consume 500 to 800 gallons of water. Today, the creek is tiny, the soil is very dry and the climate is much hotter than it was before the oil industry began. Forest fires, once limited to small areas in cold wet forests, now burn unprecedented huge areas, hotter than ever before, for a longer fire season than ever before. Make no mistake, the primary threat to these trees is our carbon pollution.

The few remaining multi-thousand year old Giant Sequoia are surrounded by giant stumps, where loggers once cut them down to make shingles and pencils, seen at places like Stump Meadows in the north part of the monument. Environmentalists began saving the groves, creating Sequoia National Park in 1890 and expanding the area over the years to protect more groves. Clinton made this grove a national monument in 2000. Now the forest service must treat the groves as special gardens, regularly removing other trees, spraying fire retardant in the area, wrapping famous trees with fire resistant tarps, and even using sprinklers and helicopters to spray thousands of gallons of water per day to protect specific trees from imminent fires.

I first visited the Trail of 100 Giants with my family many years ago, when we appreciated the stroller-friendly hiking trail. Years later, my grown kids wanted to stop here again, and I took the photo below on August 14, 2020. I remember saying how terribly dry everything was. A few days later, I was driving them north on I-5, and I watched the incredible lightning storm that sparked the SQF Complex fire that burned 171,000 acres around here, killing around 10,000 Giant Sequoias. I remember saying that it was the most lightning I had ever seen in my life. The next year there was the 98,000 acre Windy Fire, which killed 1,000 Giant Sequoias, and also the 88,000 acre KNP Complex Fire, which killed 2,000 Giant Sequoias. And the fires continue to threaten the last remaining groves, while we continue burning fossil fuel unnecessarily.

Saint Francis Dam Disaster National Memorial and Monument

April 20, 2026July 22, 2026 / bigdiff / Leave a comment

On 12 March 1928 there was a tall new dam across this canyon from the high point on the left. Shortly before midnight, after leaks were inspected around noon, the dam collapsed catastrophically. Over 400 people were killed as the water rushed south towards LA and then west to the Pacific. While not as lethal as 19th century Johnstown, this was one of the worst man-made disasters of the 20th century.

The dam was built over an ancient landslide, so when enough water saturated deep enough, the dam broke. William Mulholland, who designed the LA Aqueduct, took responsibility for the disaster. There were some problems with the concrete, the height and the design, although it was likely impossible for him to know about the unstable geology beneath the site. He had inspected the dam at noon, saw leaks, but did not raise the alarm.

While folks sometimes complain about the lack of signs at this US Forest Service managed national memorial and monument, if you take the path up to the top of the hill, you’ll find 8 large plaques detailing the early history, LA’s water wars, Mullholland’s career, issues with the dam construction, descriptions of the flood, the aftermath, the lives lost, and the canyon geology. And you get the view above, plus a view of the wing wall. Park at the north end of the old San Francisquito Canyon road, where it’s closed to traffic, and hike back down the road along the pretty creek. Look for signs on your right for the trail up the hill to the viewpoint.

Here are my visits to all NPS parks in California.

San Gabriel Mountains National Monument

April 13, 2026April 20, 2026 / bigdiff / Leave a comment

Yep, that’s a bobcat hiding amongst the rocks. I saw him on the Switzer Falls Trail off the Angeles Crest Highway, which I recommend as a moderately challenging hike with several stream crossings. Presidents Obama and Biden protected these mountains just north of Los Angeles, and they’re managed by the US Forest Service within the broader Angeles National Forest. Hiking up here is a great way to get out of LA for the day.

I’m finally caught up on my trips to Canada! Altogether I’ve visited all 16 world heritage sites in over half of Canadian provinces, so I can check off my first goal of the year.

Next week I’ll explain why I stopped in Los Angeles. Here are my visits to all NPS units in California.

All Sites in Arizona, California & Nevada

May 22, 2025June 11, 2025 / bigdiff / Leave a comment

While I can’t drive to Hawaii, I have visited all the other sites in the western region, including all the sites below and these national historic and scenic trails: Arizona NST, California Pioneer NHT, Juan Bautista de Anza & Old Spanish NHTs, Pacific Crest NST, and the Pony Express & Butterfield Overland NHTs.

Arizona