A New Dawn, Joshua Tree National Park, California

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Joshua Tree National Park, with it's piled, granite boulders and otherworldly yuccas, was a fitting place to end the Milkweed Journey.

That journey is done. The milkweed seed balls have been scattered to every corner of the Lower 48, and even a few in Canada.

Goodbye, Liz.

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General Grant by Cars, Grant Grove, Sequoia National Park, California

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Technically, General Grant, the giant sequoia, is in Kings Canyon National Park. But I chose this picture to represent Sequoia National Park because the cars give you a good sense of scale.

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Cinder Cone, Crater Lake National Park, Oregon

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Crater Lake is so called because that's what it is, the snow-melt-filled crater (caldera) of a gigantic volcano. The island is a volcanic cinder cone. The hilly shore 6 miles beyond is the east crater ridge. It also is the USA's deepest lake at 2,148 ft. (655 m).

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Hoodoo Labyrinth, Devil's Garden, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah

Along the 40 mile gravel road from Escalante, Utah, to the famous Hole in the Rock is Devil’s Garden, a hoodoo labyrinth that could be an original Star Trek set.

With each narrow corner I turned, horn-heavy danger music from the original series blasted through my head. And I kept expecting a love-sick Vulcan to jump out at me, exotic polearm in hand.

It’s a lovely spot for a picnic! Wonder if Gene Roddenberry ever stopped by to munch on some chicken salad?

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Ivanpah Concentrated Solar Power Plant, Nipton, California

No, this isn’t Mars and it isn't science fiction. It’s the Ivanpah Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) facility – the largest CSP plant in the world to date. It’s in the Mojave desert in Nipton, Calif., close to where I-15 crosses the California-Nevada border.

Source: "Ivanpah Project Facts," BrightSource Energy

Basically what you’re looking at are three fields of “heliostats” (curved mirrors), reflecting and concentrating the sun’s rays onto their respective solar receiving towers. The tops of these towers get so hot that they glow white! All that heat is transformed into superheated steam, which runs electrical-generating turbines, just like a traditional power plant.

To give you sense of it’s size, I took the somewhat blurry photo above from more than 15 miles (24 km) away. The facility covers about 3,500 acres (14.2 km²), and the towers are about 459 ft. (140 m) tall.

BrightSource Energy's 392 MW Ivanpah plant by came online in 2014 to much hooplah, but it’s had it’s problems and detractors. First, it was incredibly expensive: $2.2 billion. Of that, $1.6 billion came from a loan guaranteed by the U.S. government. After all that money, it only produced 40% of the predicted electricity in its first year of operation. Some people consider it a boondoggle. But by the first quarter of 2015, they’d increased output by 170%.

To run Ivanpah, though, it takes a lot of natural gas. … Gas? But I thought it’s solar, you say? Apparently, they have to preheat the water every morning. During that time, their CO² output is twice what California energy standards normally allow for the amount of fuel they’re burning. The state gave the plant a special dispensation. On balance, however, that natural gas only would have produced 124,000 MWh of electricity in a conventional plant, compared to 524,000 MWh at Ivanpah, a more than fourfold increase in efficiency.

The other ongoing concern is the perhaps hundreds of thousands of birds killed yearly by the concentrated solar rays. They’re just fried up in the sky. The power company is working on ways to keep the birds away. Hopefully they’ll succeed in reducing those deaths. I consider, though, as sad as it is, that many, many more birds will die if we don’t get ahead of global warming. It’s a calculated sacrifice. I feel the same way about windmills. Mind you, I think we ought fund a bunch of ornithologists to find a solution!

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Buc-ee's Gas Pumps, Baytown, Texas

In what I assume is typical for the oversize Buc-ee's, this rest stop along I-10 in Baytown, Texas, has 248 gas pumps. And the store is grocery store size!

Mosquitoes, Sea Rim State Park, Sabine Pass, Texas

Can you believe it's a 55° F (13° C) December day? And these are only the mosquitoes pressed up against the glass! ... I didn't stay the night.

Strand Bookstore, New York City

You can take the boy out of the Strand Bookstore ... but not without an armful of books!

Mystery Pyramid, Memphis, Tenessee

What is that mysterious pyramid by the I-40 Mississippi River bridge? Is it an arboretum? A casino? Learn next week in my "Weekly Travel Update" email. (Sign up at right of homepage.)

Gas Below $2 per Gallon!, Little Rock, Arkansas

Wow! I never thought I'd see regular gas below $2 per gallon again in my lifetime! Cheapest I've seen this trip!