This was taken on my trip back through the desert when I visited Cima and Kelso.

The drive to Cima was beautiful. The Joshua trees were a forest on either side of the road, covering the rolling desert land with an unexpected green fluff that turned spiny as you got close. The road itself had a reddish tinge because of the rock used in the asphalt. The sun was warm, but the air was cool. When the wind blew, I was cold.

Arriving in Cima revealed a lot of nothing. Basically, just an abandoned ranch of sorts, a couple of foundations for buildings long gone, and this house.

It was clearly a house, not just by its shape, but by its contents. There was an old mattress inside, torn and decaying, along with rusty springs for the bed. A few other ancient pieces of furniture strewn about, but mostly empty. The house must be pretty old because there is no way the county would approve of construction like this in recent years.

I tromped across the dirt and brush land about 20 yards from the road to get to the house, and was very careful climbing around. Places like this harbor scorpions and rattlesnakes. I made a lot of noise, clomping and warning any creatures that something was coming so they could scurry away. I actually did enter the house from the other side of this picture, though only a few feet. The place wasn't safe; there was debris and a wood floor that was rotting and giving way.

Walking around the place I wondered who had lived here, and why. I understood why they had abandoned the place-- it was in the middle of nowhere and the house was crappy. But why move there in the first place? There must have been some money to be made somewhere close by. There was a story here, of some sort.

The streetside view on Google Maps shows the structure in better shape; it had deteriorated some before I visited. This place won't last long. A few years from now and it will be a pile of wood.