Along the Central Californian region of the San Andreas Fault is a very large valley so large and so defined that it can be seen from space, and it is called the Carrizo Plain. The Carrizo Plain is a region of California with great extremes. First it is enormous in size and the human population is very tiny. Little wonder, the Carrizo Plain is incredibly inhospitable unless you're a Mongolian. The temperature extremes so large, in a single day it can go from over 100 degrees down to below freezing. Winters are brutal. If there was moisture, it would be a mile thick sheet of ice perhaps. Minus 20 Fahrenheit and winds ranging from 30 to 60 miles per hour is typical. In the summer it can stay over 120 degrees from 10:00 AM to after dark. The Carrizo Plain can endure decades of no rainfall whatsoever. Then late winter rains come and soak the entire plain, and the wildflowers pop, to such an extent that nearly caused John Muir to lose his ability to breathe as he passed over the Elkhorn Escarpment found on the south western border of the Carrizo Plain. The Carrizo Plain usually gets about 8 inches of rain per year, and it all comes in a few week period of time. Thanks to all that water in such a short time, through history it created a lake in the middle, Soda Lake. Some say an ancient inland sea. In any case it is bad water, you can't drink it it is too salty and alkaline ridden. There are solid dried salt patches, and an ecosystem that lives there that is highly unusual. But what I find most unusual is the tenacious spirit of the Goldfields which return year after year and don't care if the soil is good or bad or the water good or bad. They don't care. They just go on, and they try hard, and they beautify. God bless the Goldfields!