Looking at the mountains behind us at camp, it looks like dry and rocky with stripes of minerals swirled around and different rock layers piled up. Looks are deceiving though. From camp we rode up Pleasant Canyon to Clair’s Camp and back. Our ride was 14 miles with 3418’ of climbing. With a short half …
Our new spot in Panamint Valley is beautiful! We are alone on BLM land up against big desert mountains like Sentinel Peak (9634′). A couple cars go by during the day as hikers head up to Surprise Canyon Wilderness. Other than that it’s dead quiet and very remote. The down side is there is no …
We are totally digging grocery pick-up. Since last February that is how we’ve been getting our groceries and I’m not sure I ever want to go back in a store again. We place an order every two weeks or so which works great because we move boondocking spots every 14 days. Our pickup was in …
Keys View Keys View is the highest road in Joshua Tree National Park at 5187′. After hiking we drove up to check it out. Panoramic views of the Coachella Valley spread out below and we snapped a couple pictures. There was a bit of snow on Mt San Jacinto and Mt San Gorgonio which made …
We spent another gloriously sunny day hiking around in the desert looking at rocks and a mine. Our hike was a 9.8 mile loop out to Ruby Lee Mill and around Porcupine Wash with almost 1000′ of climbing. Disclaimer: We saw no porcupines. We hiked out into the Hexie Mountains across the desert heading generally …
Needing a shorter hike after a long day before, we picked to hike to Mastodon Peak and then free hike out to some rock formations and explore. Our hike was 5 miles of exploration. We started hiking from the Cottonwood Springs Trailhead and went clockwise up the wash to the trail leading to Mastodon Mine. …
After taking a day off we picked a longer hike on the other side of the park to tackle. Our hike was 9.2 miles with a whole lot of slow going boulder scrambling at the turn around point. We hiked out to Willow Hole which is a giant willow tree that is nestled in towering …
Not far from where we are camped is a great hike in Joshua Tree National Park called the Lost Palm Oasis. This hike was 7.2 with over 1050′ of climbing. We got a fairly early for us start and passed a few people pretty quickly but then had the palm oasis to ourselves. The trail …
Today’s hike was 6 miles with 1050′ of climbing, basically all before the turn around point. We drove over to Painted Canyon at Mecca Hills Wilderness area by the Salton Sea. It’s down a sandy bumpy road that winds deeper and deeper into the steep walled canyon. The San Andreas Fault runs in this area …
For the next two weeks we’re boondocking by Joshua Tree National Park. We found a big spot down a gravel road on the south side and are happy to look out on mountains. On our first day here Derek and I hiked the Lost Horse Mine Loop deep in Joshua Tree National Park. Our loop was …