An hour from home.......and nobody around for three days

We took another three day/night camping/hiking trip.

What we have been doing is camping in a remote spot, and then hiking to see if we can push further into the wilderness with our Quail and Rat (i.e., with our small Teardrop camper and Toyota 4Runner).

We had found a spot on one of our previous hikes, and decided to go there.

Get this.  When we left it, we checked the clock and were back home, in our driveway in exactly ONE HOUR.  And over the three days and nights we were in our spot, NOBODY came close to us.  Because we were on a hill, we could see a segment of the road that led to the spur we were on, and in that time saw only 4-5 OHVs.  That's all.  And nobody on our spur.

In other words, we were as alone with the desert as it is possible to be.

Quiet, dark nights.

Here are some photos showing what we can do with our Quail/Rat.  Doing this kind of thing creates a lot of "desert pinstripes" (i.e., scratches) on both units, but we don't care.  That is what they are for.  And those desert pinstripes mean that virtually no one else, except those in OHVs, will come close to us.

 

We spent a year getting this combination together, and it has exceeded our expectations.  We can get to places almost unimaginable, even in our "Turtle" (i.e., Ford 350 Dually/Slide-in Lance camper, which can get to places that virtually no other camper can get to).

Here is our site:

We are in a Cholla Cactus Garden.  We have to watch our feet, but it is absolutely beautiful.

Look hard.  We're there!

We are in this photo at the base of the hill in the middle.

Here are four photos from our site:  North, South, East and West.  

Can you believe it?

Vicky gets up early in the morning to fix us coffee and breakfast.  She likes to do this........honest!  

AND I HAVE MY JOBS TOO!  One of them is to say: "Wow!  This coffee is great!"  And the other is to say:  "Wow!  This breakfast is GREAT!"

(We all have our strengths).

We had some nice hikes.  One reason we get up in the dark is so that we are not hiking in the heat of the day.

This particular desert has a feature of our favorite deserts in that one can hike cross-country.  Some deserts are impenetrable. 

In the afternoons, we sit and look at the desert.  No sounds except the wind and the birds.

Is this heaven?  No, it's the desert.

On our hikes we found another spot, even deeper into the wilderness, where we will go next. We can't wait.