But… the weather was holding up north so I thought I would maybe venture into California just to let Anastasia stretch her legs and to explore a bit. So I headed north up to the tip of Nevada just outside of Las Vegas then west into California.
I had located a camping spot called The Heart of the Mojave that I could easily make in a day. My fuel level was pretty good when I got to the border, and I was driving on a main interstate, so I thought there would be plenty of stations along the way to refuel, but I was wrong. As I made my way towards camp, the fuel gauge was getting a little below my comfort level so I started looking for a station. I hadn’t seen one for over an hour, and the sign I was approaching was telling me this was the last exit for any services for another hour or so. I exited and started looking around and I finally spotted a little place with big yellow letters saying GAS. Yay!
This place was on the old Route 66, and it was a tourist trap basically. There were all kinds of people wandering around inside and out with their fanny packs and backpacks, speaking different languages, and one slightly flustered american woman trying to herd them in the proper direction. I pulled up to one of the pumps, they were all pretty much vacant to my surprise, until I saw the price, $4.99 a gallon for regular. And, the pumps were not setup for credit cards, so you had to go inside and pay first. Well, I bit the bullet and bought enough to make me feel comfortable with the fuel level. I have to learn to take pictures of these places and people. The lady behind the counter who took me, I mean took my payment for the fuel, looked and sounded like an old gypsy woman. She was barking prices at other customers, happy as could be, took my money, no shame, no guilt, just a gleam in her eye…
I got back on the road and made it to the campsite right as the sun was setting. It was just off the expressway, and a few minutes down a two lane road. When I turned off the road the camping areas were on the left. It was kind of small, but nice. I quickly found a level spot to park and settled in for the night.
The next morning I got a good look at the place, but I didn’t want to stay. Don’t get me wrong, this was a really good spot to stop for the night, but not the kind of place I would want to setup for a week or so. Nice views, the possibility of seeing some big horn sheep, sandy terrain, good weather, and the road that runs by it was pretty quiet so that wasn’t a problem, but it just didn’t feel very secluded and there was a lot of broken glass everywhere. I usually try to pick up trash and glass when I find it, but this would have taken a week. So, I started searching for another place to go, with the criteria that I also needed to be near a reasonably priced gas station.
I downloaded an app called Gas Buddy that helped me to find a place to fuel up about 30 miles away in a town called Twentynine Palms and there were several potential camping areas nearby, so I packed up and headed out. The two lane road was fairly busy and most of the shoulders were soft sand so I didn’t stop to take photos. But along the way the mountains opened up into this huge valley, mostly flat and barren land, but you could tell it was some sort of facility or manufacturing area. I ended up driving right through the middle of it and the sign I saw at one point said something to the effect that it was a desert environment research facility. On one side of the road the landscape was dusted, coated, spray_ed(?), with a black powder-like material, and on the other side it too was coated but with a white material that looked like snow. There were also several places that had long deep trenches with beautiful blue water in them, and I did manage to snap a shot from the van, but no idea why they were there or what purpose they served.
This little two lane road has some of the best views. The shoulders of the road were soft but at some point I started running into emergency phones on the side of the road and they usually had a solid shoulder to pull off so I managed to get a lot of good shots.I tried to see if I could find out anything about it once I reached Twentynine Palms, but didn’t find any info online.
Twentynine Palms…
This was a nice little town, but I figured out pretty quickly that it was a military town and I stood out like a sore thumb. I stopped to fuel up and see what areas I could find in the area to camp. Both on the way into town and leaving town, the land was basically desert but with a hodge podge of old dilapidated buildings, sheds, mobile homes, and they seem to be scattered across the landscape with no real rhyme or reason.
And here’s another short video that I took on the way back to Quartzite after leaving Twentynine Palms kind of a video summary of what I mentioned above.
The one thing I didn’t mention in the video was that when I looked into the available dispersed camping areas around me there was this persistent attitude that I noticed in the user comments section on several of the reviews. It seems that nomads, people who live in their vehicles, aren’t well accepted in that area. Some commented about ‘low-level’ or ‘low-life’ RVers, and others used phrases like ‘druggies living in cars’. The prejudices of society has no state boundaries, it just changes with the landscape it seems.
Well I made it back to Quartzite, but I enjoyed my exploration...
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