Crossing the Desert

There is nothing like careening across hundreds of miles of desert at high speeds in the dark to make sure you have a boarded-up cross photographed in "good light." About 300 miles round trip to Cima Road where it was 81 degrees today, gas was $3.29 and the nearest Starbucks was 100 miles back to Barstow.
Taking it up a notch, the U.S. Supreme court is debating the location of a cross in the middle of a national preserve. The American Civil Liberties Union has taken this religious symbol on "public land" (in the middle of the preserve, but Congress moved the land into private holding)to court. It stands covered with plywood for now.

A 8-foot-tall metal cross bolted atop Sunrise Rock along Cima Road in the Mojave National Preserve is the center of controversy and is being reviewed by the Unites States Supreme Court. Erected as a war memorial in 1934 in the vast California Mojave Desert by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Eric Reed/Photographer


L.A.Times Story: http://www.latimes.com/business/careers/work/la-na-supreme-court-cross24-2009feb24,0,6413397.story