Nevada - it's not just for gamblers!

If you hear "Nevada", most people think of Las Vegas and gambling; but there's more to "The Silver State" than that once you leave "the strip".  We merely hit Vegas just to restock our supplies since the fridge and cupboards are empty, and then we head about one hour north to the Valley of Fire State Park.  It's hard to believe this beautiful landscape exists here; the drive up the interstate is brown - brown desert vegetation, brown mountains, brown rock, brown, brown, brown.  Then suddenly, as we enter the park, the rocks and hilly outcrops are red with iron oxide.  The effect is stunning.

Most of the interesting aspects of the park can be viewed either from the road or from very short walks from the road, for example, Elephant Rock which really does look like an elephant's head and trunk, the Beehives which are sandstone rock hills about 15 to 20 feet high that do look like beehives (or huge cow patties if you've spent any time on a farm), Balanced Rock near the Visitors Center, and Arch Rock which is just a small arch and not really comparable to Arches National Park in Utah.  All are carved from the same red sandstone, eroded by wind and water over the past many centuries.  What makes the rock features look even more red perhaps is that all of the rain that fell even here about 2 weeks ago has greened up the valleys and many plants on the desert floor providing a green burst of colour contrasting the red rock.  The park is, for us, reminiscent of both Arches National Park and Bryce Canyon in Utah, although on a much smaller scale, but the intensity of that "WOW" feeling is almost the same.

Marilyn in wash #5 - note the brilliant colours

Marilyn sitting on top of "The Wave"

The true piece de resistance here we see on a hike down one of the washes.  We are looking for a secret spot, the photo of which is featured on the Nevada State Parks brochure.  A volunteer at the Visitors Center tells us she thinks the photo was taken down wash #5 on the road to the White Domes, and the photo is gorgeous - it is called "The Wave".  The photographer, a professional by trade, refused to tell the exact location to protect his photo rights.  Well this is a challenge that can't be refused.  We have to park some distance up the road and walk back to wash #5, and the colours in the rock along the road are breathtaking - purple, pink, yellow, and orange, like ribbons of colour in the stone.  Brad can't stop taking photos and we haven't even gotten to the wash yet!  When we finally do, the colours in the wash are intensified!  Not far along, we come to a sandy area that is underwater and we can't pass; here the walls are only about 2 feet apart.  So we have to backtrack a bit and climb up about 30 feet and go around.  We do so and come out on the other side of the water onto a beautiful, sandy beach.  The sand has the same beautiful pink and orange hues as the sandstone - of course!  And here the wash widens out, so we stop and sit on the sand to have lunch.  It's a very hot day, our first in a very long time, so we enjoy the sun and the heat.  But only a short walk further down the wash, the rock colours change suddenly and dramatically from the purple, pink and yellow swirls, to red and white horizontal stripes.  This has to be the area where The Wave photo was taken.  We turn left out of the wash and climb up the gently sloping rock.  Two other people are standing on top of a large red and white striped rock that is about 30 feet high.  They are taking numerous photos, so we head over to where they are and there it is - The Wave.  They had been looking for it too, so I don't think this place is as big a secret as we were led to believe.  But in any case, I mark the spot on our hiking GPS, and Brad starts clicking away.  The Wave effect is created by the coloured stripes folding into a bowl in the rock before following the curve around a cliff that stands some 50 feet above the desert floor.  We are here mid-afternoon, but apparently the lighting at sunrise and sunset is spectacular.  Well, challenge successfully met.  As we drive back down the road, we note which of the other washes (numbers 1 to 4) might be worthy of a hike in subsequent years.  This is a place to which we will definitely return.

We also drive the length of Lake Mead.  Valley of Fire State Park is at the northern end of Lake Mead, and we are heading to the Hoover Dam which we haven't been to since 1987.  Most of the drive is not actually along the lake, but is scenic just the same.  The whole area surrounding the lake is a National Recreation Area.  It is odd to see so many vehicles towing boats in the desert.  If you didn't know Lake Mead was there, you'd think these folks were all nuts!  There are a few vista points closer to the south end.  It is interesting to see a "bathtub ring" all around the lake on the rock - this is a high water line where the rock is white from the current water level leaching its minerals into the rock and is about 70 feet high, or should I say the water is about 70 feet lower than its highest.  This is of concern to folks in Arizona, California and Mexico who draw water from the Colorado River for irrigation.

The Hoover Dam, built between 1931 and 1936 (I think), is at the southern end of the lake technically spanning the Colorado River.  There are two intake towers on the Arizona side, and two intake towers on the Nevada side, which is odd because the two states are in different time zones - Arizona is on mountain time and Nevada is on Pacific time.  So if you work there, what time do you go for lunch?  What I don't remember seeing on the dam wall when we were there in 1987 was the stone markers I now see in the concrete.  I can't get a good look at them, but I suspect they are to memorialize the men who died while making the dam.  I count five markers in all shaped like shields.

Memorial Bridge over the Colorado River

And now they have the new Memorial Bridge which is just down river and much higher than the dam itself.  It was just completed and opened a few months ago to alleviate the traffic on the dam highway.  It too has a walkway which provides a great view of the dam.  There are numerous plaques along the walkway leading up to the bridge explaining how it was built and providing specs (I remember none of them except it's over 1,000 feet high!) - all very nicely done for the tourist.  Looking down from the bridge into the Colorado River is dizzying, but man, what a view!

That's it for Nevada.  We are back to Arizona next for the Rock & Mineral Show and the RV Show.  These shows, held concurrently in Quartzsite draw tens of thousands of RVers.  Not sure if I'll blog about that - we'll see.  We'll just be buying a solar panel and maybe a satellite dish; making some power upgrades to the mobile home, ya know!  Someone call Red Green, or Tim the-Toolman-Taylor!

Death Valley Adventures

It is known for searing hot temperatures (a record 134F in 1913 although average summer temperatures are 120F), the driest weather (an average of less than 2 inches or 5 cm of rainfall per year) and the lowest elevation (-282 feet below sea level) in North America.  Death Valley is truly a unique landscape.  Bordered on the east by the Amargosa Mountains and on the west by the Panamint Mountains (Telescope Peak is the highest at 11,049 feet), the valley in between is home to places like Badwater and the Devil's Golf Course, so named because of the salt crystal deposits left behind by water that has no escape.  In the summer, the valley floor is as inhospitable as Venus.  In January, daytime temps are about 65F (14C) and at night the temp drops to about 40F or 5C (thank goodness).  It's about the warmest we've experienced so far with the exception of L.A.

Again, since the park is so large, we section it into three pieces.  First, Furnace Creek (elevation -190 feet), the most popular area by far and almost in the centre of the park.  Here there are even two resorts, one of which charges over $300/night for a room.  We will not stay there.  We camp for $12/night (for no services mind you, just a spot in a big parking lot!).  From here, we spend two days visiting Badwater, Natural Bridge (a hike), the Devil's Golf Course, Artist's Drive, Zabriski Point and Golden Canyon/Gower Gulch (a combined hiking trail).  All are along Badwater Road, within 20 miles of each other and our campsite.

Badwater, Death Valley

Badwater, so named because water does tend to sit on the salt flats after heavy rains - as it is now - and is very briny.  There has been a lot of rain lately; two significant rainfalls in the past couple of weeks, and the salt flats are flooded here.  Which is great for photography as we can capture the snow-capped mountains reflected in the large pool of water.  Where the rains haven't flooded are small mounds of mud topped with spiked layers of salt.  From a distance, you might think it was snow. 

Brad and Marilyn at the Devil's Golf Course

At the Devil's Golf Course, this is what the entire plain resembles.  Here, nothing is flooded and serrated spires on the entire valley floor stretch 5 miles across and almost as long down the valley.  The salt peaks look soft, but they are sharp.  If you were to fall on one, you would cut yourself badly.  We walk across the "golf course" very carefully.

The two hikes are impressive.  Natural Bridge is a short 1 mile hike but as usual, Brad and I find a way to stretch it.  The hike follows the path of a wash - where water runs off during a flood.  No floods today; everything is nice and dry.  The Natural Bridge is pretty big and we watch as a German tourist scales it freehand.  The walls of the canyon are a soft sandstone conglomerate - more like mud compressed with other stones in it.  The park hiking guide says that the trail ends at a dry waterfall.  Huh!  Well, we can get up there!  So we climb up the rock waterfall; actually, there are about 4 dry waterfalls as the canyon narrows.  Here, the colours of the canyon walls change; they are now red, orange, green and yellow, and are more of a granite type of rock.  We also find a silver sparkle in some of the rocks, but it's flaky so likely a mica and not actual silver.  Darn!  We do finally come to a waterfall that would be a climb straight up about 20 feet, so we have to turn around, but it's always fun going where few others go.

View from Red Cathedral in Golden Canyon, Death Valley

The Golden Canyon hike is also stunning.  It also follows a wash up through a sedimentary canyon that is an "alluvial fan" - a fan-shaped deposit of eroded sediments (silt, sand, gravel and cobbles) dumped by floods.  The formations here look like yellow cone-shaped mud piles 100 feet high with a million tiny cracks where rivulets have flowed down the sides in all directions.  This trail ends at a red cliff wall that is some 400-500 feet high and is flat on top: Red Cathedral.  By scaling up the side of Red Cathedral a bit, the view back of Golden Canyon with its gold cones, the valley floor below and the snow-capped mountains on the far west side is magnificent.  A quarter mile back, another trail branches off and up a steep incline into the "badlands" and to Gower Gulch, a three mile loop trail.  The view from the top of this trail is brilliant - the colours of the badlands, which is really Golden Canyon - the yellows and golds and browns, the red of Red Cathedral, and the Panamint Mountains across the valley to the west; it's so breathtaking.  We can see for miles in every direction and again, we are alone up here.  The silence is deafening.  All I can hear is my own pulse, my breath passing through my lungs and a ringing in my ears.  The rest of this trail, after hiking down from the peak isn't as stunning, but interesting just the same as we hike through the wash again - a very wide wash (can't imagine the amount of water that flows through here during a flood!), and we have to scamble down some dry waterfalls until we come to the final dry waterfall - a 25 foot drop straight down!  Well, I'm not scaling that.  Fortunately, there is a trail around it and back to the parking lot.  Since we're now both thoroughly exhausted, we drive the 9-mile loop drive that is Artist's Drive.  There are a few colourful hillsides, but nothing much better than we saw on our hikes, so it is rather disappointing.  Zabriski Point is a lookout that we drive to; it looks west toward the badlands that we hiked in Gower Gulch.  This morning, with the sun shining on the hills, the valley and the mountains, the effect of the colours and the textures are magnificent.  But the wind is very cold this morning even though the sun is shining brightly and we don't stay up on this point long.

Our second stage of Death Valley takes us to Stovepipe Wells, elevation 5 feet above sea level!  It's only about 30 miles north of Furnace Creek.  From this location, we hike into Mosaic Canyon and the Titus Canyon Narrows and also drive up to Hell's Gate which provides us with a great view of the entire valley looking south.  The two hikes are rather disappointing, perhaps because we expected more or perhaps because we enjoyed Golden Canyon and Gower Gulch so much more.  Mosaic Canyon is a hike up (they're always up!) a narrow, polished, marble rock canyon.  The golden, brown rock has been smoothed by the water and gravel that rushed here during floods and when it was a stream millions of years ago.  After the first 1/2 mile, the canyon widens out into a wide wash, and the canyon walls on both sides are a dull brown.  So we turn around.  In the Titus Canyon Narrows, the canyon we hike up (up again!) is really a gravel road that can be driven down but is closed now from the other end because of snow.  While the canyon walls are high, perhaps 200 feet or more, they are only a dull brown made of some composite rock.  The drive towards the parking lot was actually more exciting as the patterns of rock compression on the mountains was more interesting.  But that's another geology lesson that I'm not qualified to give.  On the way back to our trailer, we get some late afternoon photos of the Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes which are only about 2 miles away from where we're camped.

Poor Grady.  During the first day of our stay at Stovepipe Wells, he is sick.  Since it is so cloudy, and I mean dark, overcast skies, we decide to pay for the RV Park which has full RV hookups - electricity, water and sewer.  This will allow us to recharge our batteries fully which lately are dead in the morning thanks to our furnace fan.  So, since we have electricity, we can also hook up our satellite dish and watch TV.  Hooray!  Brad doesn't like taking photos on cloudy days because they look "flat", devoid of highs and lows, so on our first day at this location, we take a day off and relax.  Grady sits on my lap as I watch the tube, and he sneezes continually.  He sneezed yesterday too - right in Brad's face!  Not pleasant for Brad!  He, Grady, has been off his food a bit for the past couple of days too, and now the sneezing.  He hasn't been as playful in the mornings, which is usually his all-out crazy time.  We play fetch with him before we get out of bed.  He has this little, spongy, purple ball that he loves to play fetch with.  It's about one inch in diameter and has silver, fuzzy fibres that protrude off it.  He loves that ball because he can catch it with his claws or teeth and throw it around.  We flick it with our finger and he chases after it, plays hockey with it for a few minutes and then brings it back to us to do it all over again.  When he's really in the game, he'll play for 15 to 30 minutes, but these last couple of days, he's only chased the ball once or twice and then given up.  So he obviously hasn't been feeling well for a day or two.  On this first day at Stovepipe Wells (our TV day) he just sleeps (and sneezes) all day.  But on the following day he seems to feel a lot better.  We don't think of our pets getting sick like we do, but I guess they do!

So Brad was a sick with a very minor cold almost two weeks ago while we were in the Mojave National Preserve.  Can a human pass a virus to a feline or even vise versa?  I don't think so.  I think I heard that the Avian Flu was the first virus that was transmitted from an animal to a human.  Comment to me if you know differently.  Anyway, kitty is fine now.  Brad got over his cold within three days, and so far (knock on wood) I've been fine.

The final stage of this desert valley tour takes us west across the Panamint Mountains; the climb is 5,000 feet.  Then we descend 3,000 feet into the Panamint Valley which we cross, and then start the climb into the Inyo Mountain Range to the Father Crowley Vista at 4,000 feet looking back into the Panamint Valley.  The Panamint Mountains are snow-capped - they are quite high with peaks at 9,000 to 11,000 feet.  The Inyo Mountains are just as high, although the highest peaks are only visible as we descend the Panamint Range from the east.  And yes, there's a lot of snow up there.  But not where we are, and the sun is shining today with only a few hazy clouds.  The view is magical.  There are small peaks on the sides of the range we descended.  There are so many peaks and valleys, they look like rumpled tin foil that someone has tried to smooth, unsuccessfully.  The lines in the higher, granite mountains are also awe inspiring.  There are white, horizontal stripes in the dark gray granite that suddenly swirl in a circular pattern.  If you have a Ph.D. Geologist as a best friend as I do, then you know there were major forces at work in the earth millions of years ago to form that mountain range and to create those twisted layers in the rock, but she would have to explain that, I cannot.  I can only gaze and partake of the beauty in the patterns.  There are also a few small sand dunes on the valley floor, and a feature that looks like it might be a pressure crater which is created by deep, underground streams that are super heated by the earth's core or underground lava, which then turns the water to steam and this eventually explodes causing a crater, so there is no flow of lava, or ash debris on the surface.  However, from the distance we're at, it's hard to tell.

Brad at Darwin Falls in Death Valley

We also hike to Darwin Falls, an unexpected oasis in this desert of harsh life.  At first, the terrain is a rocky wash like other canyon hikes, but soon we can hear a bubbling creek and there is vegetation, some of which is green and some of which would be if it was summer.  We can smell the moisture and the plants, something we haven't smelled for the past 2-1/2 months!  The path becomes muddy, very muddy, and we have to cross the creek about five times, but after about one mile, we are rewarded with a little waterfall about 20 feet high; and there is actually a fair amount of water falling with a pool at the bottom.  There are tiny plants that look almost like a clover but must be some kind of lily in the stream.  The water is freezing and we wonder what the temperature would be in the middle of the summer when the desert floor is 120F.  It must be a joyously cool place to be during the scorching summer heat.

The vegetation in Death Valley is very different from what we have been used to in the rest of the desert, and especially from Joshua Tree and Mojave parks.  Here, we are hard pressed to find any cacti.  There are still what I think is Rabbit Brush, a low bush with wiry branches and tough leaves, and a very small handful of the beautiful red and yellow barrel cactus and cholla (choy-ya) if you really look in the crevices, but not much else.  It would seem the harsh summer climate is too much for them.  Cacti must be very particular as they are very specific to a climate: the saguaro grow mostly at a certain elevation near Pheonix and in Saguaro National Park in Arizona, there is the Organ Pipe Cactus which grows mostly only in southern Arizona and parts of Mexico.  Temperature, moisture and elevation must all play a part in this plant's cycle, although we all think desert equals cactus, but there are many species of cacti as I have learned.  What does grow abundantly here in Death Valley is the Silver Holly bush, and it is beautiful.  It looks like our Christmas holly, only it's a light silvery green.  And right now it's just finishing "blooming" with it's seeds which are a very deep reddish brown.

When we leave Death Valley, we visit a ghost town called Rhyolite, which claims itself to be the most photographed ghost town in the west.  Unlike Tombstone, no one still lives in Rhyolite, in fact only the train station and the Kelly Bottle House are the town's remaining complete structures.  The town was established in 1905 after two prospectors, Shorty Harris and Ed Cross, discovered gold the year before.  By 1908, the town's population had grown to 8,000, but the mines had already begun to fail in part thanks to the destruction following the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco which collapsed so much of the financial district and caused panic in the east; funding for Nevada mines continued to decrease and by 1920 the population of Rhyolite was 14 - another gold rush town was dead.  The Bottle House is probably the most interesting, although apparently not unusual construction for the time.  People would build a house of anything they could lay their hands on, especially if it was free.  With about 50 saloons in town at its height, used bottles were abundant and free, so Tom Kelly build his house from used whisky, wine and soda bottles and adobe in 1906.  The house has since been carefully restored.

Right after we fuel up in the nearest town outside of Death Valley, two F16s (at least I think they're F16s but my fighter jet expert friends, Don and Sandra, would have to confirm that) fly past us barely 50 feet off the desert floor - I'm not kidding, 50 feet high and about 100 feet from the highway.  We've seen many jets flying training missions over Death Valley, but quite high, and usually we track four jets by their jet streams, not because we see first one, then another jet come barrelling towards us.  It was rather daunting.  Well, perhaps the Canadians are finally invading!  I wouldn't put it past those crazy Canucks!

In all, we spend 8 nights in Death Valley.  This is the end of our California tour.  We head east into Nevada for supplies (we have no food left and for those of you who know Brad, you know how dangerous that is!) and the Valley of Fire State Park just north of Las Vegas.  California has shown us the worst weather of our trip so far; not the coldest perhaps, but certainly the wettest and the cloudiest.  It is not what we expected of this golden state.

Mojave National Preserve

From Joshua Tree National Park, we travel north to the Mojave National Preserve, which is only about 50 miles from Lost Wages, er, I'm mean Las Vegas.  We are still in California, and the drive through the desert is breathtaking somehow.  I'm not sure what it is about the desert that attracts us so.  It reminds me of being in Scotland in 2003 with my sisters.  England was lush and green and full of trees and rhododendrun bushes the size of trees, and Ireland was also lush and green everywhere, but the landscape of Scotland had a starkness to it that appealed to me most of all.  It was still green, but there were very few trees, mostly small bushes and lots of heather, and rocky, craggy bluffs - a naked, vivid beauty that was breathtaking.  For me, it is the same in the desert, but where Scotland is wet, the southwest U.S. is dry, where Scotland is green, the southwest U.S. is brown.  The brush is composed of various kinds of cactus - cholla (choy-ya), yucca, rabbit brush, mormon tea, prickly pear, barrel cactus (whose spikes are a beautiful red and yellow in a circular formation), and other spiky grasses designed so that they are not eaten.  Everything struggles to survive, the elements seem to be always against life, but yet some species thrive.  Searing, dry heat in the summer and cold in the winter, in the 20s (Fahrenheit) at night and only about 40F during the day.  The ground is sandy or a small pebble stone.  We are fortunate it isn't windy while we're here.

Brad at Hole-in-the-Wall, Mojave National Preserve

This is also a big park, and we decide to divvy it up into two parts.  Our first camp takes us to the Hole in the Wall area on the east side of the park, where we camp about a 1/4 mile from the Visitors Center just off of Wild Horse Canyon Road.  Here we are by ourselves, although within site of a ranch and along the Rings Loop Trail.  But the view of the mountains which surround us, and the valley are spectacular.  Why camp in the campground which has no services for $12/night when we can camp in this site for free?.  There is also private land here and cattle and horses roam freely; it's called an "open range".  It is not unusual to hear cows lowing close by at night.  We hike the Rings Loop Trail through a canyon which has holes in the rock and on which we also have to haul ourselves up a steep incline using metal rings. 

Marilyn climbing the rings on the Rings Loop Trail at Hole-in-the-Wall

This is only a 1 mile loop trail, but the canyon is so fascinating, it takes us a couple of hours to complete.  The holes in the rock remind us of Swiss Cheese.  The rock here was formed by volcanic ash; the holes were formed by gases that were trapped in the ash as it cooled.  The canyon also reminds us of Red Mountain, just north of Flagstaff in Arizona, a cinder cone we visited a couple of years ago.  We also hike the 6 mile Barber Peak Loop Trail which takes us all day, again because we go off trail so often to see other features, study the rocks, take photos, etc.  The first half of the trail is amazing.  Within 10 minutes of starting the hike, we hear a noise that almost sounds like coyotes yipping, but it's unusual for them to do that during the day.  As I investigate I find it's a group of birds which are running on the ground, about 20 or 30 of them.  They keep a distance of about 30 feet from me, but don't fly away.  I don't think they are roadrunners as they're too small, so perhaps a type of quail?  We will have to ask the rangers.  Then five minutes later, four horses come running up from a gully.  I love horses (I was in the riding club in high school), Brad is afraid of them.  I call them over with a clucking noise and all four of them come running towards us.  Brad is taking photos, and backs away saying "Uh oh, this might not be a good thing."  Silly, if they're wild horses, they won't come near us.  If they're ranch horses, they'll be perfectly tame and probably looking for food.  Most horses love people.  The lead horse comes right up to me and I rub his nose.  Their coats are heavy, furry almost, likely to withstand the cold winter here.  Another horse approaches me and I pet him too.  Brad also conquers his fear and reaches out to rub one's nose.  Once they determine that we have nothing to eat, they run off across the desert towards the ranch in the distance.  Further along the trail, we can clearly see where they've been by their droppings and find the scrubby grasses they've been eating.  It's amazing that they're not bothered by the numerous cacti here as they are grazing.  What a treat that was for me.

Funny Grady story:  Before we make our way over to the area of the park with the sand dunes, we have to dump our dirty water and refill with fresh water at the campground.  Here the Campground Host stops to talk to us; he is from B.C. and just arrived yesterday.  While we are chatting about how he was able to come here as a Canadian, Grady is meowing at us from inside the truck, and he steps on the electronic controls on the driver's door panel arm rest.  Clunk.  Grady locks the doors.  "Brad, where are the truck keys?"  "Umm, they're in the truck!"  Grady has just locked us out of the truck.  Brad and I start laughing.  Gary, the Campground Host, thinks we're nuts.  I'm talking to Grady, pointing at the button on the arm rest.  "Step on the button Grady.  C'mon, over here.  That's a good boy.  You're almost there.  No, that's the button for the power windows.  Just a bit to the left."  "Meow.  Meow."  And then he goes to lie down in the back seat.  Gary says, "This is pretty serious, isn't it?"  "No," Brad says, "I have a spare key under the hood of the truck.  I can still get in, although I never thought it would be because the cat locked us out!"  Two minutes later, Brad has the spare key, althought he's pretty dirty, and we're back in the truck.  Now Gary is laughing too.  Grady can't figure out what the fuss is all about.

Marilyn on the Kelso Dunes

In Part Deux of the park, the Kelso Dunes area, we again camp for free in another dispersed site near the base of the dunes which rise 700 feet.  There are mountains to the west, east and south of us and a golden valley further behind the dunes to the northeast.  The views are stunning.  And all of these mountain peaks are about 5,500 feet high and create their own weather systems, meaning dark clouds and a great sunset the evening we arrive.  At Kelso Dunes, we are again alone in the desert, at least for the first night.  On our first morning, the sun is shining brightly in a clear blue sky until about 9:00 when a fog rolls in so quickly, Brad barely has time to run out with the camera to take photos.  The fog remains for over an hour until the sun burns it off, reminding us of San Francisco in the summer.  "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."  Mark Twain.  We hike the dunes, but decide not to go all the way to the top of the highest one, although many people do.  It's cold and the sun is setting and we're getting too old.  The view from the altitude we're at is unbelievably beautiful.  We can see for at least 15 miles or more in all directions.  And quiet!  All I can hear is a very distant train engine about 10 miles away down in the valley and a tiny, round piece of brush the size of my baby fingernail tumbling along beside me being pushed by the breeze blowing up and over the crest of the dune.

Brad and Marilyn in the lava tube - note the laser beam of sunlight

It is when we get back to our trailer this evening that another Jayco Designer trailer, just like ours only a bit bigger, drives by where we are camped.  We wave, as all RVers do - it's like a club.  Fifteen minutes later as we are making dinner, there's a knock at our door, and it's the owner of that trailer.  He didn't like the other free campsites down the dirt road and wondered if we would mind sharing our site with them.  Well no, off course not.  And it's already dark, so we're not going to send them away.  Besides, they're also Canadians - from Quebec.  In the morning we chat with them about where they've been, where we've been and the differences in our trailers - theirs has all the bells and whistles.  Brad is very excited.  So now we are going to outfit our trailer with a solar panel to charge our batteries, and an inverter to run our TV from our batteries instead of our generator.  And wow!  Jean has plexiglas over his screen door for cool days like this, and his bottom step to the bedroom lifts up for extra storage space, and all of his cabinets have drawers instead of just shelves, and the list goes on.  Brad will have a very busy spring when we return home.  Anyway, back at the park, we head off to the Visitors Center which we couldn't get to yesterday because of a stalled train across the track, and then to the trail to the lava tube.  As we drive up to the trail, we can see about 5 or 6 cinder cones that are covered in red or black lava stone.  The lava flowed very slowly, and didn't go very far, perhaps about 10 miles in total across the desert floor.  At the lava tube, we actually get to descend into the tube about 30 or 40 feet.  The ceiling is cave-like with tiny pointed stalactite formations.  At the bottom, we have to crawl about 15 feet and then we are in a large cavernous room that is about 20 feet high, 15 feet wide and 60 feet long.  There are two holes in the ceiling that allow light in and another ceiling hole at the very far end where the sunlight is piercing through like a laser beam onto the wall.  It's like being on another planet.

Brad, Marilyn, Denyse and Jean - new friends

As we are climbing out, we run into Jean and Denyse, our Quebec neighbours.  We invite them to dinner chez Gris and for a campfire since we are still carrying around our firewood from New Mexico.  Brad makes his famous spaghetti and they bring a bottle of wine and we have a fantastic evening, laughing at stories.  In the morning we are all sad to go our separate ways, but we have exchanged email addresses and plan to stay in touch.  Another RV friend made.

Joshua Tree

Our plan for the rest of California is to visit the desert parks - Joshua Tree, Mojave and Death Valley.  We love deserts (and desserts!).  Joshua Tree National Park is the southern most, and after our sad farewell to my Uncle Bill, we head there first.  This being the holidays still (the week between Christmas and New Years) the park is very busy, and we can't find a place to camp inside the park, even though there are several campgrounds.  Within those campgrounds though, only a few sites could possibly accommodate a trailer our size.  So we head just outside of the park to BLM land, and are entertained for the evening by three off-roaders who get two of their trucks stuck in the mud further down the dirt road.  They work for about an hour trying to get the one vehicle out and give up.  Then as the other two try to exit towards us, one of them gets stuck!  We just watch through our binoculars.  We hope they have enough beer, but you know how it is.  For these young guys, at first it's funny (and we could hear them laughing when it first happened), but after a while it's just irritating and frustrating.  Okay, I'll fess up, THEY are on the BLM land where we're supposed to be, but we saw the water on the road from the intense rains southern California got a few days ago, and we knew we should stay away.  We're probably camped on private land, but this desert is indescribable - no signs anywhere to say where one thing ends and another begins, and no one bothers us during the four nights we are here, although we have to drag the trailer with us during the day to the Joshua Tree National Park Visitors Center and leave it there for the day.  It's a bit of a hassle, but we are hesitant to leave it out here near the BLM land.

Joshua Trees in the park - a forest?

The park itself is big.  The main road that winds through it is over 50 miles long.  The north part of the park has the most interesting features and the most Joshua trees, surmised to be so named by the Mormons who travelled through this area about 150 to 200 years ago.  To them these strange plants resembled their saviour, Joshua who is pictured with his hands reaching to God like so many of these trees reaching for the hot, desert sun.  In some parts of the desert, there are so many Joshua trees it reminds me of a forest, but I don't know if you would call numerous desert cacti a forest.  And Joshua trees are not really trees, they are members of the yucca plant family, but they can certainly grow tall; a record one in the Mojave National Preserve grew to 31 feet before it fell over and died.

Hold up that rock Brad!

We spend one day doing short hikes, each less than 1 mile round trip: Keys View which provides a view of the San Andreas fault and Palm Springs in the valley to the west with Mount San Jacinto towering above it now capped in snow, the Salton Sea to the south and San Gorgonio Mountain to the north; Cap Rock Nature Trail where Brad climbs up onto the jumbo rocks and finds it isn't so easy to get down, at least it's never the same route; and Arch Rock Nature Trail which reminds us a bit of Arches National Park in Utah except here it is "white tank" rock, a metamorphic rock, not red sandstone and there is only one arch to see, but it was a great hike and there are fins similar to those in Arches National Park too once we got off the main trail and follow a creek.

Geology Tour Road in Joshua Tree National Park

On another day we drive the Geology Tour Road, an 18 mile round trip on a 4-wheel drive dirt road.  This features the different ways the rock in the park has eroded; the different types of rock - the white tank monzogranite, the darker Pinto gneiss (pronounced nice), and black basalt; evidence of mining attempts in the 1800s for gold, silver, copper, lead and other valuable minerals; and dry lake beds.

A climber walking the tightrope

There are a lot of rock climbers in the park.  We even catch one daredevil walking a tightrope between two rock outcroppings about 40 feet apart, some 75 feet up.  For an experienced climber, it would probably only take them between 5 and 15 minutes to climb many of the rock faces here, although it is possible to find some more challenging verticals here, I'm sure.  They're just not along the road.  But this is probably a great place to learn.  It must be disheartening for the novice climber to make his or her first successful ascent to the top only to find a couple of kids already up there with no equipment.  Kids are scrambling all over these rocks (Brad too! He's just a big kid!) and they're having the time of their lives.  As a mom and a consummate worrier, I wonder how often someone is seriously hurt here.  But not today.

The day in between these two days in the park we spend in the trailer, waiting out a rainy, gusty day.  California so far has proved to be a cold, wet state!  What's that song - "it never rains in California, but girl don't they warn ya, it pours, man it pours!"  We can see evidence all around us of the effects of the rains that have hit southern California.  There is sand in all of the streets that has washed off of the desert, "Flooding" signs are on the sides of the streets everywhere, and like I said above, the BLM land where we were going to camp is a slippery, clay pit.  And the cold!  At night it is below freezing.  There is a lot of snow on the mountain tops, on Mount San Jacinto (elevation 10,831 feet) and San Gorgonio Mountain (elevation 11,485 feet the highest peak in southern California), although we are not nearly this high.  Joshua Tree National Park's elevation is only around 3,000 to 5,500 feet and we are camping in the valley below at about 2,000 feet and it is STILL freezing!  Joshua Tree NP is considered the "high desert".  Although there is no snow in the park, I'll bet the people camping in tents (and there are many!) froze.  Not what we expect in southern California!  They say it's an Arctic blast from Canada.  Sure, blame the Canadians.