DHS is the most civilization I will see for the next three days, so I attend to those life-support things: replenish ice, food, cash; make a few calls while my phone has bars.<\/p>\n
Two exits down is Coachella<\/strong>.\u00a0 Looks pretty godforsaken from here. I have just driven most the same route that the kids take to the music festival, except they blast through in eight hours and I took four days.<\/p>\n Joshua Tree<\/strong> – I missed the peak flower action by a few days it seems.\u00a0 Lower Joshua Tree was blanketed with fields of what now look like little wild onions, dark purple orbs on stalks.\u00a0 At Cottonwood Springs were a few feeble remnants showing that each purple orb used to hold about 15 little bright blue flowers with the brightest white centers.\u00a0 They woulda been excellent in bloom.\u00a0\u00a0 Still the occasional bunch of cool colors though.<\/p>\n The cool thing about this park is that the lower half is one ecosystem (the Colorado<\/strong>), and the upper is another (the Mojave<\/strong>), and there’s lots of helpful park signs to explain what’s what between them.\u00a0 There are for instance, no actual joshua trees in the lower half, but the upper is crawling with them.\u00a0 The main road makes the transition through a well-marked canyon which I always enjoy greatly.<\/p>\n There are three tent-only campgrounds<\/em> in the middle of the park.\u00a0 One is big-time with the rock climbers, the other two are quieter and kinda out of the way, and I chose the one of those with the cooler name, White Tank<\/strong>.\u00a0 I tried to find the site that would give me the best morning shade, and succeeded pretty well.<\/p>\n There is a dotted line on the map called “Geology Tour Road<\/em>” it supposedly takes about two hours.\u00a0 It is now 6-ish and the sun sets at 7:30, but I do it anyway, and I’m glad I did.\u00a0 There’s a big descent so that I end up back in the lower ecosystem, but away from the main road so there is nothing but mesquite and jackrabbits.\u00a0 Not quite sure why it was a ‘geology tour’ rather than just a tour, but it was fun to bounce around and pretend I was a real off-roader.<\/p>\n The campground was very quiet, there were a couple of other cars but I rarely saw another person.\u00a0 The weather was so perfect I slept under the stars, nestled between a couple of those classic Joshua Tree rocks.\u00a0 It was awesome.\u00a0 Really, really great, except that pretty strong wind came up in the middle of the night.\u00a0 It kept waking me up, but that at least gave me an opportunity to check out the amazing stars.<\/p>\n The yuccas were blooming ten feet from my car, so I lingered a bit in the quiet morning to enjoy the beauty of the place.<\/p>\n I maximize my spring flower experience by taking the long way out of the part, slanting northwestward to come out at the town of Joshua Tree.\u00a0 I am hitting the flowers at just the right time!<\/p>\n Breakfast in Twentynine Palms<\/strong> at the jarhead Dennys.\u00a0 The front gate of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center is three miles away, so surprise, there are military everywhere.\u00a0 The parents seeing off their uni-ed up sons made me kinda sad.\u00a0 The caffiene revives me – my enjoyment of the last few miles of wildflowers was somewhat diminished by no food\/no coffee nervy-ness.<\/p>\n Gas, then head off north to go to this odd little hot spring I read about in the Hot Springs book.\u00a0 Take Amboy Road<\/strong> out of Twentynine Palms.\u00a0 It must go pretty far west to avoid the Marine base.\u00a0 Pass a very scenic cinder cone in the middle of a salt flat.\u00a0 The cone was deep dark red, so there were deep dark red rocks scattered around the blinding white salt.\u00a0 very cool!<\/p>\n Cross I-40 and enter the Mojave Wilderness Preserve<\/strong>, a new-ish federal park.\u00a0 If your map is more than a few years old, it probably ain’t there.\u00a0 I think the raison d’etre<\/em> (if I may go all french on you) is provide habitat for the desert tortoise<\/strong> – I am sad to say that I did not see any of these fine beasts, but I am all for them and am glad they have a preserve.\u00a0 There were also sand dunes aplenty, interesting rocks, and a totally unexpected early 1900’s train depot in the middle of nowhere that is now the park headquarters.\u00a0 I found it very photogenic, and if I ever get my shit together to post the pics, you can see for yourself.\u00a0 My Ranger said it was never a commercial success, but rather was there for the Union-Pacific workers, they kept a pretty big train yard here at Kelso<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Then ever northward, across I-15 at Baker<\/strong> (where I ate at the funky Greek restaurant across from the Bun Boy Motel :).\u00a0 Then another hour or so of the same ole Mojave desolation (there ain’t no desolation like Mojave desolation<\/em>), in the distance to the right was a weird marshy salt flat badlands kind of area.\u00a0 Cross that, and boom, I am in the tiny isolated town of Tecopa<\/strong>, looking for Tecopa Hot Springs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n This was my first time at Tecopa, and it is a trip.\u00a0 Men and women have separate segregated bathhouses, where nudity is enforced, allegedly for hygiene reasons.\u00a0 The pools and the water are awesome though.\u00a0 A really strong desert wind came up, so my plan of a pleasant evening in the shade of the tamarack trees didn’t happen.\u00a0 I ate leftovers in the cab of the truck then crawled into the back and waited out the night in my little 6′ by 5′ box.<\/p>\n A morning soak, very forgettable breakfast in Shoshone<\/strong>, and it’s off to Death Valley<\/strong>.\u00a0 I take a couple of short hikes and take a lot of pics, then head into the very pretty drive through Panamint Springs<\/strong> and on to Lone Pine<\/strong>.\u00a0 I stay in the pleasant little Trails Motel, which has wifi and is right next to the Movie Museum.<\/p>\n Now for the always-lovely 395 cruise.\u00a0 Take some pix of the hotel and courthouse in Independence.<\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n I take the time to drive off the main road to check out Keough Hot Springs.\u00a0 It is a lovely setting, but I always get an un-welcoming vibe.\u00a0 They want your money, as much of it as they can, and they want to do as little as possible for it.\u00a0 Your mileage may vary on this one, but I’ve never had a great time there.\u00a0 Onward to late-afternoon Mexican breakfast in Bishop<\/strong> (very good!).<\/p>\n The stretch of 395 northward – Bishop, Mammoth, Hot Creek, June Lake loop, Mono Lake, Lee Vining<\/strong> – is usually my destination, so I’ve explored quite a bit on other trips.\u00a0 So this time I just cruise through, not even taking the June Lake Loop.\u00a0 The plan is to spend this last final night in the Bridgeport area, around either Travertine or Buckeye Hot Springs.<\/p>\n At Bridgeport, pull over under a shade tree and decide what to do.\u00a0 Something about the high-altitude sun and heat, but I always feel a little added in Bridgeport\u00a0 I’m going to camp at one spring and visit the other tomorrow, but the question is which?\u00a0 Eventually I settle on camping at Buckeye.\u00a0 Although the springs are more interesting, Travertine is kind of a trashy place – too close to the road, more sketchy folks around.\u00a0 Buckeye on the pther hand is about 12 miles off the main road, four miles of it gravel.<\/p>\n Called the ranger station and he said that Buckeye Campground<\/strong> hadn’t yet opened, but dispersed camping is allowed right down the road and also at Travertine in the off season.\u00a0 [update 2011 – camping is now banned at Travertine, sigh<\/em>].<\/p>\n Camping was excellent, Buckeye HS was excellent, Travertine was excellent the next morning, although the hot sun was a bother (got a long-sleeved tee that’s gonna smell like sulfur for a while :)\u00a0 The view overlooking that pretty valley was amazing!<\/p>\n Then, sigh…, I must dissipate the lovely relaxed feeling of the Travertine soak by submitting to the slow-death rush-hour traffic of Minden<\/strong>, Gardnerville<\/strong>, Carson<\/strong>, and southern Reno<\/strong> to make my way home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Monday – 4\/14 – Joshua Tree DHS is the most civilization I will see for the next three days, so I attend to those life-support things: replenish ice, food, cash; make a few calls while my phone has bars. Two … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-april-2008-irvine-trip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Tuesday – 4\/15 – Mohave Desert to Tecopa Hot Springs<\/h3>\n
Wednesday – 4\/16 – Tecopa to Death Valley to Lone Pine<\/h3>\n
Thursday – 4\/17 – Lone Pine – Independence – Bishop – Bridgeport<\/h3>\n
Friday 4\/18<\/h3>\n