long drive transitioning through myriad dry environments and social settings. the two most impressive being the Manzanar Internment Camp and Hoover Dam. and in between those two, Death Valley. no time to do the Las Vegas strip in the process, though it was on the near horizon at one point.
Manzanar lies on the eastern flank of the Sierras in the dry rain-shadow cast by the 13000-foot-plus range. humidity is typically in the single digits most of the year. following Route 395 south from Independence, one parallels this flank, not only dry from the air, but also dried out through the efforts of the City of Los Angeles who, early in the development of that metropolis, bought up much of the land in this area so that the rather abundant water streaming eastward down from those peaks could be tapped off to feed the golf courses and car-washes of the City of Angeles 300 miles to the south and west. with names like Owens Valley, Paradise, Dogtown, Convict Lake, and Rovana, what were older ranching and farming communities were literally drained and dried up. it’s parched now.
along after this war on the land came the WWII contingency of the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans from their lives elsewhere to the Manzanar Internment Camp. there is almost nothing left of the camp today except the dried-out foundations, grid streets, scraggy plants and trees hanging on the outwash plain below Mt. Williamson. there is a visitor’s ‘interpretive’ center, and a three-mile driving tour with small wooden signs saying where different buildings were. it is depressing after stopping to meditate in the remains of the hospital garden to hear pairs of F-16’s screaming and rumbling around directly above, dog-fighting: the war continues.