E Sierra

California's Backside

Much of what I'm covering on these pages is what some might consider to be the 'backside' of California -- an area with few well-known tourist attractions, with weather that many consider inhospitable, and without the infrastructure (roads and airports) needed for easy access. Possibly related to this 'backside' status, the history of the area has been heavily influenced by the various 'wars' of the west -- water wars, mining and land use battles, World War II, and subsequent military operations. This combination of remoteness and history, however, makes this an exciting area to visit and one to which I often return. I hope that the following web pages will encourage additional exploration of these areas, and consideration of the issues faced by California's "backside".

If you want to trace this on a California map, it's basically the area relatively close to the border of California and Nevada. The order of pictures in the northern section of these web pages is 'upside down', starting from California and meandering north into nearby Oregon and then meandering south through Nevada and back into California north of Bridgeport. The rest is essentially southern in direction, starting from about Bridgeport and coming down to Lone Pine. From Lone Pine there are various roads east through the Panamint Valley (with side trips south to Trona and to Red Rock State Park) to Death Valley, south through Tecopa, Baker, a side trip to Barstow, then Mojave National Preserve, Kelso, and Amboy to Twentynine Palms; and further south through Joshua Tree National Park. After Joshua Tree its a zig-zag: west to the Coachella Valley (Palm Springs) and Mornogo Valley, back southeast to the Salton Sea, west to Anza-Borrego State Park; and then back east again over the Algodones dunes (between El Centro and Yuma, AZ).

The area covered by these pages is large and there are lots of pictures -- thus I've broken it into multiple smaller segments.

In 2009 I moved all of these photos to Flickr since it was easier to update pages on Flick -- the links below will take you to Flickr pages for each set.