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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