Joshua Tree National Park is in the Mojave Desert, and as we left there and headed north we noticed that there was a visitor centre marked in another part of the Mojave desert. On stopping there we discovered an area called the Mojave National Preserve, with camping and hiking trails that allow dogs. We decided to stay one night there. To get to the campground we had to drive over about 14 miles of gravel road. Should be no problem, we're from SK, we thought, but it turned out to be 14 miles of washboard road, and it was about the worst washboard we have ever been on!
The campground had spectacular views to the south, but no trees. It must be extremely hot in the summer.
There was a hiking trail that led to the visitor centre and then made a loop around a large mesa composed of volcanic ash and agglomerate. We went on the hike with the dogs.
They did well scrambling up the rocks until we came to the rings.
Some sections up the mesa-cutting canyon trail were so steep that the Park Service had installed iron rings for hikers to hoist themselves up through the crevice. We had to help the dogs climb those sections. Lack of opposable thumbs, you know!
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| Evanna on the rings |
Our next stop was Death Valley, and it was pretty deadly - 35 degrees C and 50 - 80 mile per hour winds ahead of a 'cold' front. The place has very little vegetation and none of it is in the campground, which is a large gravel parking lot, wall to wall with RVs. You can imagine the dust!
But the scenery there is spectacular and we spent an evening and part of the next day on some scenic drives to take pictures of the wonderful colours of the eroded rocks, mostly volcanic.
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| Zabriskie Point at sunset |
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| Zabriskie Point |
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| Zabriskie Point |
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| Salt deposits in the valley |
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| Colorful rocks on the Artists' Drive |
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| Evanna on the Devil's Golf Course, an eroded salt playa. Note classic alluvial fans at foot of mountains across the valley. |
We left Death Valley and stayed one night at Tecopa Hot Springs in the California Land Management campground. The campground has a hot spring and they have developed two hot pools for men and two for women. The men and women each have their own building which contains a hot pool, a cooler pool, showers and a change room. Clothing (i.e.: bathing suits) is not allowed in the pools, hence the segregation. The water leaves your skin feeling silky but is not fit for drinking due toxic heavy metal contents (including arsenic) and we found the evening soak very relaxing.
One of the campgrounds has a labyrinth which we walked up to contemplate. The water behind the labyrinth is a sewage lagoon that attracted lots of birds, as does any water body in the desert.
Near Tecopa Hot Springs we visited a date farm called China Ranch. We purchased some dates, muffins and date loaf, and went on one of the hikes on the property. The current owners have opened the historic property to hikers and birdwatchers. There is a spring-fed perennial stream that supports relatively lush vegetation. That makes it an obvious magnet for migrating and wintering birds. The hills in the photo are cut into Plio-Pleistocene lacustrine deposits that have been faulted somewhat by very recent tectonics. Gypsum was mined here in the early part of the last century.
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| Hiking at China Ranch |
On to Nevada Next!
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