Feb 23, 2014
Can you find us in the photo? See anyone else around?
We stayed at our first campsite in the Mojave National
Preserve for seven nights. In those
seven nights not a single vehicle or person came anywhere near our
campsite. Just us, alone with the beauty
of the New York Mountains.
We stay in a variety of campgrounds. It has not been unusual on this and our
previous road trips for us to be the only campers there. That is because we travel during the offseason,
and in the west. Once we got closer to
the east coast, though, we frequently found ourselves in very busy places. They have been nice for the most part, but we
prefer the stillness of nature.
During our week stay there, we hiked in every direction we
could—up and around all of the hills, through the washes, up the roads to two
canyons. We also had two days where we
just sat around and read and enjoyed the sound of the wind through the desert
grasses.
We found evidence of old mines and old
wells, and artifacts that we didn’t understand—such as two places high on hills
where large X’s had been created with old plastic and old boards and where, in
the center, was a 4-inch piece of metal nailed to the ground with a rusty nail
that had the letter/number combination CP 102 and CP 103. A mine claim?
At the Ranger Station, all we got were guesses.
We also found some mines, and an old well.
This mine was interesting because it still
had the original ladder attached that men climbed down into the hole on. Can you imagine doing this? Not in my worst nightmare.
The Dawn of Man. Cue Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Actually, we couldn’t figure out what this even was. We sometimes found cairns in unusual places,
with none others around anywhere in sight.
Someone built this one high on a hill, to mark something. Took a lot of effort.
Such incredible beauty. Just outside the door of our camper. We walked one direction one day, another direction another day, and so on.
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