Detour

On Sunday, we began an adventure drive that was to take us to the dunes in Eureka Valley, next to Death Valley. We drove east through Gilbert Pass, then cut onto a dirt road through the Fish Lake cattle allotment. That area is bleak. We turned right to go up, then down a narrow pass into the valley. There is no water source in Eureka Valley, so it's pretty dry and harsh. The Subaru traversed the pebbly, rocky, and sandy floor, slowly. We jostled about for quite awhile before reaching, at last, a groomed dirt/gravel road. At that point, we checked the tires, and one seemed a little low. The dunes looked way, way off in the distance, so we redirected ourselves to Big Pine. At the service station, we got gas, air, a Sunday LA Times, and a mixed slushie. Then, redirected ourselves again to Manzanar, the WWII Japanese-American internment camp in the Owens Valley. The National Park Service now operates the site as a historical and interpretive center. In WWII, over 120,000 were interned in various locations; about 1/10 of them at Manzanar, where families tried to create a relatively, normal community. The conditions were harsh and bare bones, and it was bracing to think that this kind of racist event happened not too long ago, here in the US. We headed back to our community with mixed feelings in our hearts.