Our hike from Wild Horse Canyon in the Mojave National Preserve

One of the reasons we chose this dispersed camping spot for our final days of our road trip was because there was a hike we wanted to take from here. Last year we camped in this area, although at a different spot, and tried to take the hike we wanted. However, we couldn't because I had a foot injury.

So, we waited a year, and tried again.

And it turned out to be one of our top hikes ever, and this is saying a lot because in less than four years together we have taken over 325 hikes!

What made it special?

First, we saw no evidence that anyone else had been where we were hiking in many, many years, if ever.

Second, it was stunningly beautiful.

Third, there was no trail. We carved our own, and had to find our route ourselves. This made it exciting.

So what was the hike?

It began by descending a deep drop off from our camping spot in the Providence Mountains, scrambling down hundreds of feet. We were trying to reach meadows that we could see. And then we needed to find our way back, by scrambling a different route.

Here it is!

First we had to boulder scram down several hundred feet

This photo shows the hill we scrambled down. See Vicky?

After we descended several hundred feet we saw a broad meadow that we wanted to try for:

We made it there, enjoyed our success, and then worked our way back to our camper using a differeent route.

This was our view of our camper on our way "home."

We will never forget this day.

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Valentine's Day

We spent the past six nights in the Providence Mountains in the Mojave National Preserve. We had a beautiful, isolated campsite.

And took some nice hikes. Not among our most memorable, but we aren't we ever getting spoiled.

 

After six nights, we decided that for our final days for this road trip, before we headed home, would stay in the Wild Horse Canyon area. So, here we are, ready to spend five nights in this isolated and beautiful spot.

It is so peaceful here, and so wild.

Would I ever feel these things if I wasn't here?

Would I ever know these things existed without her?

Can I truly be alive unless I experience the raw emotions of this isolated and stunningly beautiful place with her?

 

As Oscar Wilde once wrote: "All bad poetry springs from true emotions."

 

 

 

 

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No Grapes of Wrath? Arriving at the Blind HIlls of the Mojave National Preserve

After leaving the Whipple Mountains, we traveled to the BLM Wilderness Area called the Paiute Mountain Wilderness.

To get there means traveling for a few miles on old Route 66, the road the Okies used to travel to California to escape the Dust Bowl.

However, there had been a big rain that washed out some of the bridges, so several miles of the road were closed. If this had happened during the Dust Bowl the Joads could never have gotten to California, and Tom Joad would never have killed that guy, and Ma Joad wouldn't have been able to end the film The Grapes of Wrath with "We are the people. We are the people."

Good thing it happened to us, and not to them.

So, we adapted. We went to the Blind Hills area of the Mojave National Preserve, instead.

We took some great hikes.

One of them was really spectacular. There is a tall mesa next to where we are camping, with a steep ascent to get to it. On our final hike in this area we wanted to see if we could make it up to this mesa.

We started by hiking up this hill on the right side of this photo. We got about halfway up, and then headed straight across to the left until we reached the small saddle on the left side of the photo. Then we climbed up there to the top.

Here is Vicky almost at the top:

The view from the top was spectacular.

The mesa was about a mile and a half long. We traveled to the other side, and found a route back down to the desert floor.

On our way down we found the remains of a very old structure, and the remains of an old dam.

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Hike to the Turk Mine in the Whipple Wilderness

 

Our final hike for our three weeks in the Whipple Wilderness was to a mine we found on our maps. The Turk Mine is along the western edge. An old mining road leads to it, which we followed. About a mile and a half later we were at the mine.

 

 

 

After poking around there for awhile we decided to continue further into the wilderness. We followed another old mining road for awhile, until it ended for no particular reason, and then continued north.

 

Weird rock formation. Looks like a spine.

 

The road to nowhere is above Vicky's shoulder

We traveled until we had seen enough, and then returned using a different route, making our trail a flattened figure 8. The three hikes we took from this camping spot, and the hike we took from the road to the Lucky Day mine are shown in the following map.

In the interior of the wilderness we saw a lot of evidence of lawbreaking. Many people had traveled into the wash in their dune buggies, and all of them knew that was illegal. As one of the Rangers had told us, people just drive over the signs and break them off. Once more I have to say: some people!

We searched the area for the rest of the sign so we could erect it, but to no avail.

 

 

 

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Unexpected findings on our hike to the Twin Lode mine in the Whipple Mountains Wilderness

We spent 11 days hiking in the area of the Whipple Wash, in the Whipple Mountains Wilderness, and then one day hiking in the area of Wyatt Earp's Lucky Day mine in the south part of the wilderness.

Now we are camping on the west side of the wilderness, off of the old Parker to Needles Wagon Road, which is another gravel road in this area listed as needing 4-wheel drive. Glad we have it!

Here we are:

You can see our camper in the next two photos too if you have a magnifying glass:

 

From our campsite we hiked into the wilderness area to explore it, and to see if we could locate the Twin Lode mine.

The first thing we found was that the sign indicating the boundary of the wilderness had been torn off and thrown high into a pile of rocks. We had been told at BLM offices that they'd basically give up keeping the signage because so many people just drive right over the signs indicating that no motorized vehicles are allowed. What is with people anyway? Or, some of them.

So we retrieved it and put it back up. Can't hurt.

We hiked farther up the mining road and found the mine.

We just look in mines. We don't go into them.

After leaving the mine, we identified some other old roads, and followed one. It ended in a wash that we had to scramble through. On a mesa above the wash we found this:

 

So what was it?

I think Vicky nailed it. It was a very old decorative shale business. There was a lot of shale around there, and it is likely it was stacked on the palates for carrying out. The strange display I am looking at might have been some sort of aid for helping the diggers identify the kinds of pieces that were being sought. It is as good of a story as we could come up with. Got a better one?

It raises the question once again for us as to what constitutes historical artifacts and what constitutes garbage. Should this stuff be left in an official Wilderness Area?

We left the old roads at this point and started hiking across country. We wanted to see if we could make a large loop trail out of our hike today. This is always something fun we like to try to discover.

With the aid of our GPS (and we would never attempt making our own trails without a GPS), we climbed and descended some hills in the general direction of our camper. We reached the top of one hill and saw, in the distance, that there was someone either camping or rock hounding in a small valley hidden from the road. There appeared to be two off-road vehicles there, from what we could make out at a distance.

Out of politeness, we skirted that area as best we could. But when we looked closely, something was clearly wrong about the scene.

There was an off road dune buggy type vehicle there, but it had been abandoned. With the keys still in it! And the other vehicle was a toy jeep, probably battery powered at one time, also with its "key" still in it. Nothing else around. Why was it left there? It had been trashed, but it would seem that some parts would have been salvageable. And according to our maps it is not on any kind of private property. Even Vicky couldn't come up with a good theory about this strange site. We did wonder whether there might have been a story in the newspaper 20 years ago about a family going missing after leaving for the California desert in their dune buggy. Was there?

This photo gives you an idea of how remote the place we found these two "treasures" was. Again you may need a magnifying glass.

Another fun hike. As with 95%+ of our hikes, we saw not a single other soul. Just the two of us in the beauty of nature.

 

 

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