Last year's New Year's resolution

For 2015 we set a goal of exercising one hour a day.  We defined exercising as hiking, cycling, playing ping pong, or hard yard work.

We met our goals, like crushed them.

We totaled 524 hours, or an hour and 25 minutes a day.  

This included 294 hiking hours, and 174 cycling hours.  

We cycled 2002 miles this year and hiked 526 miles, including 12.5 miles of elevation.  That's a lot of up!

Both of us, but especially me, have physical issues that are common to people in their late 60s.  The old bod isn't like it once was--a gradual process of deterioration and wear.  A lot of movement is critical to keeping us going.  

So we make that a priority.  And neither of us could do it in gyms or exercise clubs. We have to be outdoors.  Both of us were outdoors children of the 1950s, so that is what is in our blood.  Thus, our road trips.  We both believe that our road trips are critical for our survival, in addition to meeting many of our emotional needs. 

It is New Year's Eve.  We are having roast beef for dinner, thanks to Vicky.  We hiked 5.4 miles today, saw beautiful mountains, and found interesting artifacts.  Vicky surprised me with a bottle of Malbec.  Tonight we will be sleeping in the desert wilderness, with no one around for miles.  Total and complete isolation and quiet.  Only the sound of the wind and, if we are lucky, coyotes. 

Happy New Year!  

Respecting the past......my fight with an eBay seller

For the past 10 days we have been camped next to sites where General Patton trained soldiers in WWII how to engage in desert warfare.  There are eight to ten of these Desert Training Centers in California and Arizona, most in such deplorable shape that they should be an embarrassment to all of us.

One thing the Bureau of Land Management makes cystal clear is that gathering artifacts from these sites is illegal.  The BLM shouldn't have to do this, because any person with a brain should realize that this history belongs to all of us.

But even on our trip we have seen artifact hunters--one person telling us he has been doing this for 30 years and who asked us to be on the lookout for two specific kinds of artifacts he was looking for.  We kept quiet.

However, I was not as quiet when I did a search on eBay and found a seller who was auctioning items he said he collected from one of the sites.  Here are his listings:

So I contacted the seller with what I thought was a nice email, asking him to either return them or allow me to pay postage to send them to me and I would.  Instead, he changed the description of the items to say that he had gathered them from "private property near the Desert Training Center." 

So either he lied about the first description or he was trying some dypsy do with it.  

So I reported him to eBay (selling artifacts is against eBay policy), and then informed the seller that collecting these items was against the law.  Instead of allowing me to return them, he just removed them from his seller list.

We look for artifacts.  Many we would love to keep, but we have kept nothing from all of our travels.  We found a WWII era 50 mm caliber shell casing, and a WWII coffee container that would have looked great with our vintage coffee collectibles collection.  We take photos, and then hide the things we found.  

A WWII era series D Coke bottle.

WWII era intact Absorbine Junior bottle:

50 mm caliber shell.

Old and very neat coffee container:

As I said earlier, anything we find we return in a more hidden condition.  People driving through on ATVs looking for these things will not be able to find them.

Each of the things we have found was handled by a boy or man who risked or gave his life for us and our families.  None of these things belongs to any of us--they belong to all of us.  

Here is a copy of the email I sent to the eBay seller:

Hello

My wife and I are currently in our pickup camper just outside camp Granite. We have been hiking through the Desert Training Centers, being quite moved by the experience. And quite chagrined by their condition.

We have found many interesting artifacts, and after photographing them we return them to where we found them. We believe those artifacts belong to the memory of the boys and young men who trained in these places, and who died for us.

We notice that you are selling many artifacts.  

We would like to ask you to consider just returning them to the site, out of respect for these boys and men, and in respect for future generations so they can experience these sites and realize the sacrifices made.

If not, would your consider selling all you have to us for postage, with the guarantee that we will return to the place next winter and return them to their rightful place.
Respectfully,

Another desert mystery

We are camping and hiking in the Granite Mountains of California--the ones that are in Riverside County, not the Granite Mountains of the Mojave National Presrve.

As is our typical practice, we just head out either on old roads or across the desert.  

On one of our hikes into this area we found something unusual, and perplexing.  It appeared to be the remnants of dozens of old shacks.

All of these shacks looked to be of the same era and construction.  All had windows with screens.

They were spread out over at least two acres of ground.  Maybe more.

And they appear to be pretty old.  

Why?

What were these?  They were about a mile from the WWII Camp Granite, but nothing we have read about this Desert Training Center suggests there were any wood structures built there.

We cannot find anything online about them.

Just something lost to history, apparently.  But there were enough of them to house a large number of people at one time.  We found no mines nearby, but even if we had, there were too many structures for it to be an old mining camp.  No signs of any type were posted.

Just another mystery about the desert.

Some photos of the rest of our hike that day.  There are several more miles of these mountains that we will be explore in the coming days. 

The camper is far in the distance, above my head, in the next photo.

We continue to find Mylar balloons, everywhere.  We probably average about two per hike.

Merry Christmas

....from the Granite Mountains in California

Photos, from both directions, of our Christmas location.

The Spirits of Camp Iron Mountain

In Mama's bedroom closet

To this day on her top shelf

There's a flag folded three corners

Laying all by itself

    ---The Statler Brothers.     Silver Medals and Sweet Memories

By 1942 the desert war against Germany was going badly. To solve this problem, the army designated a number of training grounds in the Arizona and California deserts.

General George Patton was commander of these training grounds.

We decided we wanted to visit one of these--the Iron Mountain Desert Training Center.  

We didn't know if we could manage the old dirt road to it, but we did.  Barely.  We got bogged down in the sand at one point, but the old girl (our F350) bumped and ground its way through it.  Whether we get back out again tomorrow is another story.  (Note to family:  if we don't return in March, please send help).

The camp is about three miles by one mile in size.  It is surrounded by fence, thankfully.  There are turnstiles for entry.  These serve to prevent entry by OHVs.  

But it also appeared that few people come there.  We saw only one pair of footprints in the entire compound.

There are no structures per se because none were built.  The men lived in tents.

But these tents were not erected in a haphazard fashion.  Instead, the men created acres of roads, sidewalks, gardens, and tent "areas."  They created these paths and roads with rock borders.  These remain---their commanders perhaps recognizing the need for order even in a hostile desert environment.  Or maybe it made the boys and men feel more like it was a home.  

Also remaining are two chapels.

Vicky and I walked the length and the breadth of this place.  It was so quiet.  It was like we were on hallowed ground.  

We were both frequently lost in our thoughts.  Over a million young men and boys came through these training centers during WWII.  All were full of hopes for their futures.  

And yet it is likely that, for some of them, the last letters their mothers ever got from them were sent from this camp.  

For those mothers, this was their boys' last home, and the war didn't end for them with the victory over Japan or over Germany.  

In fact it never ended for them.

I don't think the rest of us can ever understand the courage of mothers, like Vicky who also did this, who see their sons go off to war.  

This was a special day for us.

East Coast Swing in the Sheep Hole Wilderness

2000 hiking miles!!!

Thanks to the wonders of GPS and spreadsheets, on today's hike we knew we would pass 2000 hiking miles since we started our roadtrips in January of 2012.

We even knew the "spot" so stopped there for our party.

It was an extra special occasion because the hike was so interesting.

We are in the Sheep Hole Mountain wilderness, on a seldom used road (no one has been on it since we have been here).  We are camped just outside the wilderness area, so that means a hike of a mile to two miles until we get into the mountains.  The remoteness of the area is captivating.

Here are a couple of shots of our camp site.  In the first one, we are not visible unless you have a magnifying glass and incredible eyesight.  We are in the middle of the photo, in the sandy area toward the top.

This one is from a closer point.  Nothing within miles.

So for six days we have been hiking into these rugged mountains, to see what we can see.  What we have seen has been beautiful.

This shows me walking across the desert toward the mountains.

After our celebration, we went into a small canyon and hiked and scrambled our way through it.

Then we scrambled out of the canyon.

...and followed a spine back toward our camper.

Utterly alone with nature, as we are about 95% of the time at our campsites and on our hikes.

When we started road trips we hiked almost exclusively on trails.  By the time we got halfway through our third road trip we had learned the beauty of hiking where there were no trails.

Now, on our fifth road trip, we virtually never go on established trails.  As of today we are exactly halfway through this road trip and haven't been on any trails.  The advantages of hiking off trails are (1) no other people, so we have total solitude, and (2) no dogs whose owners think we find them as cute as they do and so who have no reservation whatsoever about violating the rules regarding dogs off leashes.

And, we have adventure.  We never know what we will find and what will be around the next corner.

We are truly blessed to be able to enjoy the outdoors in as close to its uncontaminated form as is possible, in these far too brief years of people's lives when they are retired but their bodies are in adequate shape for this kind of endeavor.  We both know that given our ages that can change literally and figuratively in a heartbeat, so we celebrate each day, each camp spot, and each hike,

And today was a special celebration--2000 miles up hills and mountains, through canyons and open deserts, across plains and over rivers.