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Published: September 17th 2008
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Lake Isabella
Lake view from the dam Back to California 16th September 2008
We have just spent two days driving back to California across the desert. Sunday’s drive took us from Flagstaff to Barstow and yesterday from Barstow to Lake Isabella. The drive to Barstow was fairly monotonous; desert, desert and more desert. Yesterday however was more interesting. We avoided the freeway and drove firstly across yet more desert and then found ourselves in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada with trees, instead of cactus and rivers instead of dried up beds, which we call “ramblas’ in Spain but here they are called “washes”, e.g. Coyote Wash, Walsh Wash etc. Lake Isabella is in a lovely location, in a valley by an icy blue lake. It is also, however, Hicksville (like so many small towns in the States). Finding somewhere to stay wasn’t easy, with boarded-up old motels abundant (the result of a town being once on the main route and now by-passed by the freeway with its Best Western and Holiday Inn motels). We drove around the lake and saw a little motel that looked OK despite the fact that nobody seemed to be staying there. The office was locked so we rang the bell.
Lake Isabella
Marina at Lake isabella A woman, wearing a long Pioneer-style skirt and sporting a wild gray 60’s backcombed hairstyle, answered the door and the conversation, with her stood partly behind the door, went something like this…
Woman: “What do you want?”
John: “We wondered if you had any vacancies”
Woman: ‘How many?”
John: “Two” (indicating me stood at his side which prompted her to peer out to see whether he was lying or not)
Woman: “Two queen beds, 85 dollars excluding government tax”
Me: “That’s very expensive, does it include breakfast?”
Woman: “We make coffee, sometimes”
O.K., Thank you but no thank you! Is this Lake Isabella or Deliverance?
We drove back in to the town and found somewhere, scruffy, cheaper but clean with a nice Taiwanese proprietor. It was fine. The only other problem was being unable to find anywhere to eat. Hicksville doesn’t do restaurants only eating places of the fast food drive-through variety. Not a single restaurant in the whole town. We drove around the other side of the lake, about 5 miles and then gave up, drove back in to town and each settled for garlic bread on a polystyrene plate, pizza on a tin prison-style plate and a
Kern River
Kern River near Lake Isabella couple of Buds. We sat at the Formica and actually the pizza was pretty good. The only other customers were “good ol’ boys with beer guts and military caps. Woke up with some strange bites on arms and neck (not mosquitoes); will apply antiseptic, antifungal and antihistamine, kill or cure!
Today, as we drive nearer to the coast and civilisation, where ever we end up staying, hopefully we’ll get a decent meal. Despite this, however, we can’t complain; it was our choice to get off the “beaten track” and we are glad that we did; scenery is stunning.
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