12/5 Road to Death Valley

This was a relatively long drive for me.  I try to keep my driving days to no more than 225 miles, and this one was 220 miles.  Driving a motorhome is much more stressful than driving a car because there is so little room for error.  I keep both hands on the wheel almost all the time because I worry about having another blowout and losing control.  In addition, a big vehicle like mine is very sensitive to wind and the push of air from passing trucks, both of which make you swerve a bit.  And a lot of roads are not exactly level, making your top-heavy-feeling vehicle a little harder to control.  All in all, you really have to pay attention.

I drive in the truck lane at about 60-65 MPH.  Legally, I do not have to obey truck speed limits in most states because I have only two axles, but that speed feels about right to me anyway.  I do occasionally pass trucks, but not too often. I can go uphill a lot faster than most of them can, but downhill, they sometimes beat me.  Today, I had some pretty scenery to look at and the first 40% of the drive was on good freeways:

The freeway went through Barstow and Baker, which was my exit.  Almost no traffic on this state highway, but lots of mountains and wide vistas.

I like roads that go on seemingly forever!  I could easily stop in the middle of this one to take pictures because as you can see, there was no traffic for quite a few miles.  The shoulders looked a little sandy to me, so I was afraid to pull off the highway and get stuck.

Yes, that is a puddle!  I drove right past another even bigger puddle.  (I need to start paying attention to places where people are stopped because they are often stopped in a place for a reason.  I saw two motorcyclists looking at the puddle I drove past, but I was going too fast to stop and no place to turn around.)  I took this picture while stopped in the middle of the road because I could see a couple of miles behind me and several miles into the distance and there was no one!  They had a substantial rainfall last week and a smaller rain last week, hence the puddles.  Notice the salty-looking crust near the road and on the mountains.

After a while, all the scenery starts to look the same.  Did I pass this before?

Finally, the official entrance sign.  Actually I had been driving inside the park for a while before I got to this sign.

More mountains and long vistas.

It almost looks like there is some water in the bottom of Death Valley, but I was not sure.  Will check tomorrow.

I got set up into my campsite at Furnace Creek.  What you cannot tell from these photos is how cold it is.  I had to keep the cab heater going on this whole drive because it was so cold.  High temp today in Furnace Creek, one of the lowest and normally hottest parts of the park, was 53.  Low tonight is supposed to be 25.  Brrrr!   Supposed to have a high of 44 tomorrow and an equally cold night tomorrow night.  Got both furnaces and my electric heater going tonight!  Just glad I am not in a tent. 

12/4 Mohave Narrows Regional Park

Not all public parks are either state or national parks. In fact, some of the nicest parks I have found are regional parks, such as Lake Pleasant and Usery Mountain parks near Phoenix, which are part of the Maricopa County Parks and Recreation Department.  In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I stayed one night in a jewel of a Riverside County park:  Rancho Jurupa Park, very close to the city of Riverside, California.  It has a new campground with full hookups and large cement pads, and lots of things for kids to do.  I will be going back there and the two regional parks in Arizona in 2014 because they were so nice.  In spite of being near cities, all were quiet and rural feeling.

Most California state parks are expensive and have no hookups at all, not even electric.  The attitude of the state seems to focus on rustic campgrounds near scenic areas.  Anyway, when I look for campgrounds on my route, I am careful to also look for regional parks.  (A commercial campground is my last-resort because they tend to be expensive, dirty, and cramped.)

I spent the last four night here at Mohave Narrows Regional Park, near Victorville, CA.  It was halfway between the Salton Sea and Death Valley and not too far away from Joshua Tree National Park.  It was a little more run-down than some of the regional parks, but it had asphalt pads, good roads, and full hookups for a reasonable price.  I also knew that being near a good-sized city, it would have good cell service and lots of chain stores for some needed shopping.  Here is the approach to this park.  You can see the small lake and day-use area:

There was one other family the first two nights, but then I had the place entirely to myself the last two nights.  This does not bother me because the gates are locked after 4:30 pm so no one can get in.  In addition, there are rangers that patrol a lot during the day.  Here is how empty the place was:

I received and faxed some stuff to my bank at a local UPS store, refilled a prescription, picked up some stuff from a Home Depot, got gas, and did some grocery shopping while I was there.  The rest of the time, I got some work done.   I also was entertained by the constant and heavy train traffic going past on a triple track just 500' from my campsite.  Luckily, the sounds of trains does not keep me from sleeping. 

12/2 Joshua Tree National Park

From the Salton Sea, you can take the advice of your GPS or go through Box Canyon along Box Canyon Road.  After talking to the camp hosts at Salton, I decided to take this shorter and more scenic route and was very glad I did.  It was really an excellent road, although the shoulders were sand so I did not pull my motorhome over to stop.  Since I saw no other cars in the 25 miles along this route, that did not matter!  Here are a couple of photos of Box Canyon and the road that runs along the interstate:

After crossing the interstate, I entered the national park. 

This is a wash where water flows during heavy rains.  Apparently, they had some heavy rains the previous week and also in August.

What I neglected to take a photo of was my car keys sitting on the seat of my motorhome, while I was outside with all the doors and windows locked.  I sat around for a while visiting with the rangers hoping someone with an RV would come by who had a "basement" compartment key that would enable me to break-in, but after an hour of no luck, had to get help from the rangers to call dispatch who would call CoachNet for me to get someone to come to get me back in.  The whole thing took three hours because it was in such a desolate place, with roads having speed limits of 35-45 MPH.

Anyway, it was late when I arrived at the Cholla Garden, so I could not take the time to walk the paths, but I did give the guidebook the rangers had given me to a woman who was looking for one.  Need to come back here someday and spend some more time.  This is the densest concentration of cholla I have ever seen.

This is a strange cactus.  It looks like it was moved here from some other place.  Often, rangers will move an unusual cactus if they have to build something where it is located.  Might be a hedgehog cactus.  Not sure what variety, however.

Finally, on the way out, I got to finally see some Joshua trees!!  I saw some of these many years ago when I taught a class at Edwards Air Force Base, but have not seen any since.  They are about 15-20 feet tall. 

They have such funny arms and shapes, but don't produce much shade!!

Elevation at the national park is about 4,000 feet, but you can see the valley in the distance.  The town is called 29 Palms and is at about 2,000 feet, so I had a nice coast downhill. 

This night, my adventure continued.  I got to my campsite late and found the gate locked and no on around. I had to walk a very long distance in the dark and cold with only a small flashlight to find other campers who could give me the lock combination.  I found a family in two vehicles.  One of the women kindly drove me back to the gate where I had left my vehicle and waited until I got in and started my engine.  Her husband met me at my site and was ready to help me back in.  Very nice of them!  Overall, campers are extremely nice and helpful.  I almost never feel unsafe in a campground.  In the one or two situations where I have felt a bit unsafe, I left as soon as I could. 

By the way, the next day I went shopping and bought a much more powerful flashlight and will keep it in the cab area so it is easily accessible.  I don't like driving at night and have only parked a couple of times in the dark, but it is very nice to have a good flashlight. 

12/2 Salton Area Agriculture

The land around the Salton Sea is a large agricultural area.  Here are some photos I took of some of the crops:

This is one of many date groves.  There are places along the roads that sell all sorts of date products, including date shakes.  I bought some date nut bread and had a date shake. It was OK, but I did not like the little sharp pieces of dates getting stuck in my teeth.

And here are grapefruits.  I was told the season was late so these were not ripe.

And oranges, also not ripe yet.

 

I saw a lot of fields of grape vines, but a lot of them looked half-dead.  Not sure why. Maybe it  is the time of year.

 

 And here, you can see a field of peppers ready to be picked.  There were some pickers waiting to begin down by the cars.  This area is very close to Mexico so there are a lot of migrant workers in the area, far more so than I have seen in other areas of California.  These were large, long red peppers.

11/30 Salton Sea Campground

The Salton Sea is a very strange place.  It is 225 feet below sea level and is extremely hot in the summer.  The sea is also more salty than the ocean and slowly drying up.  While there have been many lakes or seas in this location, the current one was created in 1905 when the Colorado River broke through a dike and filled the depression before the engineers could stop the water from flowing in.  It is very beautiful with the mountains in the background. 

The campground is on a parking lot, next to the beach.  Not much to do here but look at the sea and the mountains.  I had full hookups, and camping on a parking lot at least kept the sand away from you, so no tracking inside.

 

For a while the Salton Sea was a very popular vacation destination with hotels and subdivisions built in the area, but as the water has become more saline and the lake smaller, the number of fish has been reduced through die-offs, and the water not a very good place to swim in.  It is also not a very good place to even visit in some times of the year because of the smell of the dying and dead fish and the hoards of flies.  Winter, however, is very pleasant but you still would not want to swim here.  In addition, the beach consists not of sand, but of the bodies of dead barnacles.  It is extremely hard to walk on--parts of it are hard and feel crunchy and other parts are soft and tear up shoes and feet.  I had on sandals and the sharp barnacles still got inside my shoes and poked into the soles of my feet. 

The only fish remaining are tilapia, and you can fish for them and even eat them, but the water receives most of its replenishment from agriculture, so there are probably pesticides in the fish.  Another strange thing is that the dead fish are sort of preserved by the salt, so they litter the beach. You can see the bodies of the dead fish in this photo.

In spite of the dead fish and the salty water, this sea is on a major flyway, so it attracts millions of birds every year.  You can see some gulls here and some ducks and other birds floating on the calm water.  I only walked on the beach once, and then had trouble getting off of it without the barnacles getting into my shoes and cutting into my feet! 

 

In spite of all its problems, the Salton Sea is a beautiful and peaceful place.  However, while it was in the low 70s while I was here, it can get to 120 in the summer, so I would be careful about what time of year I would choose to visit. 

11/28 Borrego Springs Sculptures

I posted some of these sculptures a few days ago, but on the way out of town, I drove past some others, so I am posting them now.  The artist is Ricardo Breceda from Perris, California, but the land these are placed on is owned by Dennis Avery.  The statues are very popular and the roads going by them has a very nice, very wide shoulder to enable people to pull over and walk among them.  I only took photos of about half of them, so if you ever go to this area, get the map and have fun finding the rest of them.

This first one is some sort of large bird on a nest with two babies.  If you look very carefully, you will see a snake in the nest, which may be why mom is so upset!

The snake is more visible in this view.

This is one of several saber-toothed lions.  This one is perched on a rock.

This saber-toothed cat is chasing what is supposed to be a pre-historic horse.  One problem is that this horse is much bigger than the pre-historic horses that lived in North America.  It also has the wrong hoofs.

Another cat.

And two saber-toothed cats fighting.

11/27 More Cactus & Wildflowers

I thought I would post some more flowers I found yesterday on my hike through Palm Canyon to the oasis.  Since I am going to be in the desert for a few months, I am back to trying to learn the names of as many as I can.  I take the photos and then go back and use the several books I have bought.  Sometimes it is really hard because some flowers are so similar to others.

This one is a beavertail cactus.  Can you see why?

This is brittle bush.

There aren't too many flowers in the desert this time of year, but this brittlebush had some very nice flowers.

This is not a very good photo, but this is cats claw.  If you brush against it, the curved thorns will catch you!

This one took a long time, but I finally identified it as desert hibiscus.  The plant is only about 15" tall.

And this was easy because it is desert lavender.  Smells very nice if you crush a flower in your hand.

This is a rock daisy.

And finally, this is trailing windmills.  I am going to make this larger so you can see it bigger. The flowers are very tiny.