Day 1: Southbound and down…
We were smiling as Shar exited the conference center in Seaside at 4:00pm. I had already checked us out of the condo, Austin was reloaded, and it was time for take off. First stop was Salem for the rest of the gear.
The drive from Seaside to Salem cuts across some beautiful Oregon countryside, and it didn’t take us long to get out from under the dreary coastal clouds and into the warm summer sun.
I had left everything laid out and ready to transfer to Austin once we reached Salem, and had already grabbed some chicken wings and cheese in Seaside for dinner. It only took us 20 minutes to be back on the road and into the slow traffic of the freeway. The time said 7pm and we had a long way to go. I had driven us from Seaside and continued so that we both could eat dinner.
It was 11:30 when we crossed over into California. I had gotten us as far as Roseburg, and Shar was now in the saddle. Neither of us had anything left in our physical tanks, so we took the second exit we encountered. We pulled over onto a large gravel area at the top of the exit ramp, and began converting Austin into “Sleeping Mode”.
I’ve already described how this looks in the last blog post, and it worked very well even with us being pretty tired. In no time at all we were curled up and cozy. We encountered two other vehicles as we were converting. The first was nothing more than a couple who smoke a cigarette and switched from being sleeping person to driving person. The second was a trucker that didn’t stay more than 10 minutes. Austin does a decent job of blocking highway sounds for they didn’t keep either of us awake throughout the night.
Day 2: I-5 to US-99S
By 5:17am we were both awake enough to get up. The air went out of the mattress and we crawled out of Austin. Since a rest area was only a few miles down the road we decided to postpone breakfast and coffee. Putting Austin back into “Driving Mode” took a little longer, but speed will come with repetition.
After a breakfast of homemade granola, a mix of heavy whip and water, a sprinkling of vanilla pudding mix, dehydrated bacon, and coffee, we were back on the road. It was I-5 south until we hit Sacramento, then a short chunk of US 50 before a long stretch of US 99 south. We ate lunch outside a small burb called Keyes and hit the Safeway in Turlock to add some veggies to the RC for dinner.
We took a left on US 58 in Bakersfield and started the trek across the scrub covered hills towards Barstow. We had been making great time because of Austin’s turbo and cruise control, and the only obstacle to a fast pace was the occasional traffic slow down/back up when one big rig would pass another.
The area started feeling familiar and a discussion of Borax, Twelve Mule Teams, and Boron began. It didn’t take long before Shar’s summation of “We’ve already been here.” turned out to be accurate as we passed the town of Boron which is the home of the Twelve Mule Teams plant which produces borax soap. We also saw a jet plane graveyard that we had once seen in the further distance on our way back from Boston or Bust.
We had to put a pin in visiting Cesar E Chavez National Monument, which was supposed to be our first stop. It had always been a “hope so”, but little stops add up and the monument closed about 30 minutes before we would have gotten there. We saw a couple interesting points of interest in Barstow, so we will probably return when we do our big California National Park trip someday.
Once we turned onto Highway 247 south of Barstow, we started feeling better, less on the beaten path you could say. It’s actually a wonder how many people do live out here in the harsh beauty, for the countryside is dotted with structures. It is true that a lot of them are either abandoned or just temporary places for hunters, for we have seen similar in eastern Oregon.
Our goal was to find a place to boondock somewhere between Lucerne Valley and Yucca Valley. This would put us within 30 minutes of the Joshua Tree Visitor Center where we wanted to start Day 3. I turned too picky though, and we ended up having to turn around in Yucca and backtrack. The spot we chose turned out to the sand “parking lot” of a giant art structure located on a nearby hill. We didn’t take the time to climb the 1/4 mile+ up to see it though, another pin added to our wish list.
Dinner was chaffle hamburgers. Even though the two paddies had been in the RC for over 24 hours they were still very frozen, slowing down the cooking time until I was sitting in the dark eating mine. This is one of the drawbacks of one pot cooking, but the food was delicious.
We cleaned up dinner, finished getting Austin into “Sleeping Mode” and climbed in. It was a peaceful night, even with the occasional vehicle traveling up or down CA247 a hundred yards away.
Day 3: Joshua Tree
We got to the center a few minutes before they opened and we found a nice large parking lot containing a portable wash station, several locked port a potties, and a garbage can. The only things it was missing were a place to sit and a table. We made Shar a quick cup of coffee, then got breakfast unpacked. By then the visitors center was opening and we went in to explore their exhibits and buy our trinkets. Our tradition for this trip will be a patch for the largest national park in each state, something that will go on our backpacks eventually. We also have the plan for a long, decorative “walking stick” that will run above the passenger windows in the skoolie. The National Park System (NPS) sells these medallions that visitors can put on their own wooden walking sticks. This is something we have purchased in the past and will do so at any park or monument that sells them. In lieu of a patch we will buy a sticker representing that park or monument. Our skoolie will have plenty of sticker space when we finish converting the cab.
While I double checked with the cashier/ranger my list of best places to visit in Joshua Tree, Shar used the restroom. We were both excited about our day in the park.
We used my Veterans Pass for the first time to get into the park for free, saving us $20. We started near the middle of the park on a 3 mile hike up Ryan Mountain. It was a difficult uphill trail and we made it 3/4 of the way before taking some pictures and heading back down. This experience taught us taught two things. First, NPS’ scale of difficult actually meant difficult. Secondly, even though the hike was beautiful, we don’t have enough time to complete such hikes if we want to include a variety of points of interests. We only have one day in some of these parks, after all.
The temperature was closing in on 80 degrees by the time we got back to Austin, but would reach the 90s by end of the day. After doing a short 1 mile loop of Barker Dam we found park rangers handing out bottles of cold water. Since we had our own water, we thanked them anyway and headed down the road to Wall Street Stamp Mill.
We stood in the parking lot eating a lunch of apples, sunflower seed butter, cheese, romaine lettuce hearts, and homemade jerky. This hike was only 2 miles, but we packed two liters of water in the day bag, and departed.
I’m not likely to describe any of the points of interest in this blog, google them if you’re interested. But the true story is when we were returning from the old gold ore processing mill.
We chose an alternative path to return to the parking lot that started out wide and well defined. It didn’t last long, but a GPS map app I use, maps.me, is pretty good at adding trails. It even had the two “Old Rusty Cars” on the map. Because of the detail, I saw we weren’t that far away from a point of interest I wanted to see, The Worth Bagley Stone. Shar wasn’t interested, so I used the app to guide me and glanced back to see Shar continuing down the trail. It took me about 5 minutes to find the headstone, so knowing I was then trailing Shar, I headed off at an angle to catch up to her. When I got back to the general area of the trail, I didn’t see her. I thought maybe she had made better time than expected so I continued down the trail towards the parking lot that was about 1/2 a mile away. I would walk, stopping frequently to look around for Shar in the relatively flat area we were in, but didn’t see her even as I reached the parking area.
I was starting to get concerned, so I took the full bottle of water out of the day pack and left the pack on top of Austin to indicate that I had been there. I headed back down the trail again, taking a different spur just in case. I saw a duo of young women making their way back from the Mill, so I cut across the scrub to intercept them. When I was in talking distance I asked if they had seen Shar, which they hadn’t. I asked them to tell Shar if they saw her at the parking lot to stay put. They wished me luck, and I headed back down the trail towards the mill, intent on asking another visitor the same question.
I hadn’t reached the young man yet when I saw Shar waving waving at me across the scrub covered terrain. Turns out she had just moved a short distance down the trail to a shady spot under a jack pine to wait for me. Luckily, she had heard my initial call at the young women because my voice had carried downwind to her, exiting her “hiding spot” in the shade. We were both relieved and made our back to the parking lot. Another lesson learned, and another set of default expectations established.
It was closing in on 4pm as we sat in the parking lot deciding on the rest of the day. We really only had three more points of interest to go, so we headed east again to check them out. We only had to slow down to see the first, Skull Rock, but the second, Split Rock, was further than we wanted to walk after having already done over 7 miles. The less than one mile to see our first arch, Arch Rock, didn’t seem too daunting. It was well defined, level, and worth the extra time we used to see this natural formation.
At 5:38pm we got back into Austin, heading south out of the park.
Unfortunately, this was the opposite direction we wanted to go. Kinda dumb to spend days making the Itinerary then not use the darn thing, right?
So we went east on I-10 for a short time, then CA-62 north. 25 miles got us to the junction at US 95N and we stopped around 8pm to make our dinner of Caribbean Jerk seasoned hamburger, pepper jack cheese, and diced tomatoes. We piled this yumminess on Romaine lettuce heart leaves to decrease the number of dishes to clean.
So our first day in our first park was behind us and we had learned many things that will set precedence for the rest of the trip. First, we decided the longer hikes, over 2 miles, will have a time limit. We discovered on Ryan Mountain that we would have seen everything worth seeing had we done a shorter version of the hike, leaving more time for other points of interest or relaxing. Second, we felt good about how much we did see in Joshua even though we hadn’t crossed everything off the list of possible points of interest. Getting a good feel for a park, which does generally have a overarching theme, will be something we focus on in future locations. Third, our solar panel system on top of Austin is working not just good, but outstanding. It is easily keeping up with the power output needed to keep RC a steady 4 degrees Celsius. The panel kept the Jackery power station at 100% nearly all day, even when sitting in high 80 degree heat. Its really nice not having to worry about our food spoiling. Lastly, we are having a great time!
Next up: The Big One, i.e. The Grand Canyon!
Joshua Tree National Park Points of Interest visited:
Ryan Mountain Trail
Barker Dam Loop
Wall Street Stamp Mill
Arch Rook
Skull Rock
Cholla Cactus Garden
...and read about 50 information kiosks.
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