We left home in our camper on Saturday, September 24 about
noon. Traffic was great (remember this for future reference) and we made it to
Chris and Murrah’s in about 2 hours. We enjoyed the rest of the day visiting
with them.
After spending the night camped in Chris’s driveway, we left
to spend a couple days in the Mohave Desert National Preserve. We took I-10
east past the fields of wind machines, stopping at Hadley’s new store near the
Morongo Indian Casino, buying dates at a local farm on Dillon Road, and staying
overnight in Yucca Valley.
On Monday we wanted to have breakfast at a favorite
restaurant, the Carousel, in 29 Palms. Sadly, they seem to be out of business
so we ended up at Dennys. 29 Palms seems to be a city of barbers and tattoo
shops (due to the nearby Marine base) with few other services for the normal
tourist (not even a grocery store we were told). In contrast Yucca Valley seems
to be booming.
So, the past two days traveling through the Mohave have been
very quiet. One can almost imagine we are back in the pioneer days of horse
drawn wagons, miners, and wild West cowboys. The road we were on was almost
deserted (it is part of the old Route 66). The vegetation was sparse and
brushy. The land was fairly flat with rocks and hills in the distance. We
passed through an area where there was a chloride mining operation and even
that looked deserted. There are lots of run down one and two room shacks
littering the landscape. Don learned that they have been there since the 1930’s
and later when the government had a policy of giving 5 acres of land to anyone
who would build on it (a homestead act). Apparently lots of people took them up
on the offer, but not many stayed! Now some of these properties are being
purchased by entrepreneurs and updated to be rented as vacation homes.
We ended up in a campground called Hole-in-Wall in the
northeastern part of the park. There were only a few other campers there, but
it was a lovely, well maintained campground. The campground host told us that
within a week it would be full because hunting season was starting, so we timed
it well. This part of the desert is formed from ash from volcanic eruptions, so
the rocks are very porous (consequently its name.)
On Tuesday we headed for a land mark called Cima Dome where
we could dry camp on BLM land. The campground is behind the WWI Memorial which
is a huge rock with a cross on top. We didn’t do much, just relaxed and walked around and enjoyed the peace and quiet. The weather is perfect, hot and dry with a cooling breeze. We have seen some beautiful cloud formations, sunsets, stars, birds (maybe a condor), rabbits, listened to an owl. The vegetation is actually quite lush – sagebrush, Joshua trees, cactus of all kinds, lots of little yellow flowers, and other chaparral plants.
