Day 2: The Bandits of the Vasquez Rocks

The Vasquez rocks are actually named after a Mexican bandit, Tiburcio Vasquez, who stole gold from the Acton gold mines, thieved along the Soledad Canyon, and wanted to kill the Norte Americano and help bring California back to Mexico. He spent a long career riding from Los Angeles to central California, horse-thieving and sharing acquaintance with the likes of Red-Handed Dick and the infamously brutal Juan Soto.

Alvin knows the high desert well. He spent time up here with his father, who 'goes up in the mountains and stays up there all day. He says he can meditate up there.' The Vasquez Rocks area is protected as a county park, which means we were able to walk on solid dirt roads well into the center of the park.

The rocks face diagonal to the Earth - They have been uplifted by millions of years of shifting and faulting. It's all the Garlock fault, which also lifted the El Paso range from the ground to the north. Scientists muse this to be the southern edge of a central Californian plate - a plate which could be shifting ever west and taking the High Sierras with it.

As we dug deeper into the Vasquez, we could see the evidence that this was a border region between two strikingly different deserts. The El Paso's split the Mojave from the Great Basin. The Mojave's botanical life is all derived from tropical terrain to the south. Great Basin flora are derived from arctic species.

Here at Agua Dulce, and to the north in Red Rocks Canyon, we can see the elements of both deserts: mesquite, yucca and prickly pear cacti from the Mojave, and pines, scrub oak and manzanita from the Great Basin. We walked down into the lowest quadrant of Vasquez, where water collected in natural rock-reservoirs. This is where a tribe of Serrano Indians were able to extract clean water and live from as early as 4,600 years ago until Spanish began their long process of intermarriage and conversions.

We climbed to the top of a set of holed-out and tilted formations. From here we could see the giant set of cave-rocks where Vasquez made his final hiding spot from vigilantes and posses who had been on his trail for years. Gunfights broke out here in an attempt to take Vasquez. He survived the fight, only to become a hero to Mexican Americans hoping for independence. On the road back to Los Angeles, I apologized for the cracked windshield and the rain and the sleet pouring into the Jeep. "Its no problem," Alvin said. "What's a little rain for a day of cruising in the desert?" Damn, I thought. What more could define the words of a traveler.

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