Just for a perspective of the area
I drive Highway 395 between Northern and Southern California multiple times yearly. It is the major eastern highway between the Sierras and southern California, so it gets a lot of semi-truck traffic, RV's, LA weekend warrior and OHV types. The road is currently 100X better than it used to be 20 years ago.
The stretch between Lone Pine and Adelanto, or Victorville is really not pretty desert. Especially between Kramer Junction and Adelanto is flat featureless dry scrub without trees. I think there is one old sad Joshua Tree, but not even anything like the flats with many Joshua Trees slightly farther north. The sky is never blue, it is always dirty and hazy, either from dust or from the relentless heat. It is an area I never want to have car problems in and always drive during daylight, avoiding being on that road in the dark.
It has always had a sense of menace, to me, as there is a lot of open space where stuff like this could happen and no one would find you until they saw the buzzards circling.
It is also in San Bernadino county, the largest county in the US at over 20,000 sq miles. The county has a real deficiency of LE and investigatory people for the size, and for the large influx of people coming in who wanted to live in southern California but are "priced out to the desert".
I drive Highway 395 between Northern and Southern California multiple times yearly. It is the major eastern highway between the Sierras and southern California, so it gets a lot of semi-truck traffic, RV's, LA weekend warrior and OHV types. The road is currently 100X better than it used to be 20 years ago.
The stretch between Lone Pine and Adelanto, or Victorville is really not pretty desert. Especially between Kramer Junction and Adelanto is flat featureless dry scrub without trees. I think there is one old sad Joshua Tree, but not even anything like the flats with many Joshua Trees slightly farther north. The sky is never blue, it is always dirty and hazy, either from dust or from the relentless heat. It is an area I never want to have car problems in and always drive during daylight, avoiding being on that road in the dark.
It has always had a sense of menace, to me, as there is a lot of open space where stuff like this could happen and no one would find you until they saw the buzzards circling.
It is also in San Bernadino county, the largest county in the US at over 20,000 sq miles. The county has a real deficiency of LE and investigatory people for the size, and for the large influx of people coming in who wanted to live in southern California but are "priced out to the desert".
). The white van is on Lessing. JMO
