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This is the refuge of no mortal men.....Shangrala out in the Mojave is more like it....a place where time is suspended or the Twlight Zone begins....No one would suspect that a circumspect desert road leads to such a place. A place where time is forgotten.

My story begins one Saturday afternoon on a drive to check what is out in Jean. Getting off the 15 freeway on the way to LA. There are 2 casino, 2 gas stations, a correctional facility, an airfield, fire station and a couple of commercial buildings and that is the town of Jean. Heading out on a desert road into the mountains I went through a thunderstorm with lighting bolts lighting up a grey sky....and there, something must have happened to suspend time for there comes a fork in the road in mens lives and I decided to take the side road to Sandy Valley after driving through the desert canyon known as the Columbia pass you enter into a green valley. There is nary a gas station, restruant or store in the place...there is an airstrip, mobile homes, manufactured homes, a church, horse ranches and a solitude of times past. A veritble refuge from modern life...yet only 45 miles or so from Las vegas.

Heading back through the canyon I decided to head up over the rim and found myself in the town of Good Springs an old frontier town of 30's style bungalows and a single saloon by the name of Petes, all out in a desert where the unsuspecting traveler on the highway would guess there is nothing but barren desert....