Saturday morning, my friends Mary, Jeanne and I set out on a road trip through the Mojave desert to the town of Ridgecrest where there was a Petroglyph Festival, which also included a crafts fair and a Cherokee Inter-tribal Pow Wow.
The petroglyphs are located on the China Lake Naval Base. In order to see them, you needed to book a seat on a bus that would take you there. Because of the crowds, we decided to skip that and instead enjoy the rest of the festivities.
Red Rock State Park is more beautiful and impressive than the pictures I took from the car.
But, as you can see, there's a lot more than sand to this high desert I have come to love.
There were quite a few people wandering up and down by the stalls of the crafts fair. I have no idea why I didn't take any good pictures of this event.
I guess I just don't like to put a camera in people's faces, so I'm more comfortable with their backsides.....
More backsides......
And, believe it or not, but I actually marched up to a group of young firemen, told them I had a crush on fire fighters and could I please take their picture. They agreed, they even smiled, but the picture didn't come out. I'm sure they thought this old lady must be suffering from something, hero worship, or whatever. I didn't care, I had fun.
And, believe it or not, but I actually marched up to a group of young firemen, told them I had a crush on fire fighters and could I please take their picture. They agreed, they even smiled, but the picture didn't come out. I'm sure they thought this old lady must be suffering from something, hero worship, or whatever. I didn't care, I had fun.
With a little help from my friends, I am coming back to the lighter side of life.
Looking for the Pow Wow, we found this cowboy instead. He had the coolest chuck wagon I've ever seen (actually, I may never have seen a chuck wagon before, but never mind). He had everything you could imagine,
even a meatgrinder, just like the one my mom used to have. You can hire him and his wagon for BBQs and other events.
More backsides......
The Cherokee Inter-tribal Pow Wow was held indoors, which took away some of the atmosphere, I think. Still, it was a fun mixture of tradition meets the 21st century. Jeanne pointed out that the small boys in the middle wore Seattle Seahawk colors with the seahawk featured in several places on their costumes. And she also noticed that the plates that held a feather on top of their heads were actually CDs. Those two were beyond cute.
While it was great to see the youngsters participating so vigorously, I loved this older guy. It gave me chills to watch him coming around the floor, again and again, in time to the beat of the drums. Like someone from another place and time.....
On our way home, we drove through the old mining town of Randsburg. It looked so much like the mining towns in Pennsylvania and West Virginia that I traveled through a long time ago. I would very much like to go back to this old town, less tired, to explore it with my camera. Old houses, leaning, meaningful junk left behind, mixed with pretty bungalows painted in candy colors, it doesn't get much better than that.
I have more to share from this trip. Jeanne had stories to tell about old men of the desert, a robbers hideout, and at the museum that we also visited there were pictures and information about interesting plants, ancient trees, dangerous snakes, and much more that I will post about at a later time.
