Afton Canyon (continued)
As it happens, we did end up driving across the river into Afton Canyon. There actually were two water crossings, and the second was deeper than the one I photographed. Due to a camera malfunction, there’s no photo of me up to my bumper (and a fraction of an inch below my doorframe) in Mojave River… darn. However, I did make it across (obviously…since I am posting this) and saw some grand, eroded desert-scapes.
Interesting striae in rocks
Layers of eroded mountains
Eroded cliffs looming over our parking spot in Afton Canyon
Afton Canyon
Finally! Alone at last! Here is Afton Canyon Natural Area between Barstow and Baker on 1-15. I am not camped in this lovely spot. It is possible to camp here, but it costs actual money, a total anathema to the Vagabond Tourist, even though the fees are quite reasonable ($6.00 per night, or, if you are old and have a pass, a mere $3.00 per night). Instead of shelling out the 3 bucks, I selected a spot on the desolate plateau directly outside Afton Canyon where, at night, I can watch the ribbon of light as thousands of cars stream down the freeway a couple of miles away. And in the day, I can trike into the canyon, which as you can see is lovely.
We are overlooking the campground…there is an RV in the distance. The road in is suitable for RVs, although there is one steep hill with some loose material that may cause momentary loss of traction. I didn’t see any huge rigs in here, but there were some moderately sized rigs. I would drive my 30 foot class C in (if I were driving it anywhere ever again).
Just up the road from the campground
Maybe 500 feet past the campground, there’s a water crossing. It is passable (a phalanx of about 5 vehicles drove through it 10 minutes before I reached it), but it wasn’t that great for triking. I rode about 1/3 of the way across and the water was deep enough to reach the middle of my wheels and getting deeper…that would be about 12 inches. I imagine it probably wasn’t more than 18 inches deep or so (the bottom was invisible due to mud, possibly stirred up by the 5 vehicles ahead of me, so who knows), but I didn’t feel like getting wet so I gave it up. I’d probably do it in the truck. In fact, I might do it in the truck another day.
Here’s a better view of the crossing. This is the Mojave river, which runs through the canyon.
Spangler Hills
After resupplying in Ridgecrest, we popped over to Spangler Hills recreation area for a week. I liked it…the first night. Then about 500 RVs rolled in with boom boxes and OHVs and motorcycles and set up miniature RV cities with loud party music and American flags with motorcycles appliquéd in the middle. Thankfully (and I bless them for it), they did abide by quiet hours and faithfully turned the music off at exactly 10 pm. Unfortunately for me, I am still on Mountain time and it seemed like 11 pm to me. Whereupon they got on their motorcycles and roared through the desert for a couple more hours. What is it about nighttime and the desert that is irresistible to drivers of motorized vehicles? Tungsten Hills: cars driving through your campsite at midnight. Saline Valley: jeeps driving over Steele Pass (and into your campsite) at 3:00 am. Spangler Hills: motorcycles roaring through the desert at midnight. I don’t get it. What if you fall into a mine shaft or get buried in a wash or drive into a river in the dark? Or just lose the road? Some of them are pretty hard to follow even in broad daylight.
I shot around all the RVs to capture this moonrise. I didn’t figure anyone would be interested in seeing 25 giant rigs huddled together as if awaiting the apocalypse..
Alabama Hills...moonrise over the rocks
We left Saline via the South Pass (never again). It’s only a few miles longer than the North Pass road, but the road is slower and rougher, takes almost twice as long and punishes your tires, so another time I’d pass on it (pun intended). It dumped us off in Lone Pine just a few blocks from the Alabama Hills, so we spent the night huddled beneath the rocks.
Moonrise
This campsite was not exactly the best for solar cookery, so we bought pizza in Lone Pine
Saline Valley Part 2
So I went back to Saline Valley and spent almost 3 happy weeks there…happy except for the crowding. One night, two other vehicles invaded my campsite (unheard of! bad camping etiquette!!). Still, even with the hordes of people, it is an awesome place. Another year though, I will come at a less popular time, like maybe before it cools off.
2.25 miles up the “road” from the upper springs (actually a trail of boulders interspersed with sand and large gravel), there is a natural warm pool. Although my trike was malfunctioning horribly (slipping out of gear), I wanted to see it badly enough to trike up there anyway. Once. There is nothing worse than trying to bike when your bike won’t stay in any gear, particularly when you are on sand, gravel and boulders. It’s a testimony to my —er— persistence (or shall we call a spade a spade and say stubbornness) that I made it there and back at all. After readjusting my derailleur for the 500th time to no avail, I discovered that my cassette was bent. I tried to straighten it enough to ride with a pair of pliers, but it only got worse. Another year (and I will be back) I will ride up a bunch of times as I prefer the natural pool to the concrete ones.
Someone at the hot springs told me this pool was all full of black scum. Is it just me? I don’t see any scum of any color. In fact, I plunged in with all my clothes on, had a great time wallowing for a while, and came out cleaner than I went in.
Here’s the setting of the pool. I was bummed to learn that all these palms were added by “improvers” (meaning people). I had thought they just sprang out of nowhere because of the water, but no.
Dreadful weather coming over the Sierra
I was forced to leave Saline Valley, totally against my will (and I threw an almighty temper tantrum over it which only ended this morning), due to business, which I was unable to conduct because there’s not a hint of a Verizon cell signal within 50 miles of Saline Valley. AT&T people can get service from the lower springs, but I am not one of these. So I had to drive out. And I had to drive out a day before my deadline because there was a horrendous storm on the way and I thought I might get snowed in due to bad conditions at the pass. This is the sort of unpleasantness nomads have to put up with.
Anyway, I didn’t want to return to Buttermilk Road because of the dead-end-creek-Tungsten-hills-people-all-over-my-campsite thing, so I looked for another site and found one off of Pleasant Valley Dam Road on the bluff overlooking Bishop Creek and Owens Canal. Very lovely view. There, I watched the predicted storm come rolling over the Sierra. There, I sat in the nano-house all day and night while the rain pounded away on my roof and created huge puddles on my tailgate so I couldn’t go outside without releasing a flood into the house. There I sat, hoping my roof would stay on and I wouldn’t lose my solar panels, while my rig made such noises as I have never heard before as the wind howled across the desert and the storm, after way more hours than I had hoped, finally blew itself off to the east. It would have been just as scary in Saline Valley…there was a wind advisory there, too…but it would have been drier and it would have been 55 or 60 degrees instead of 30. After the storm passed and the sun came out and it warmed up a hair, the campsite looked nice again, so I stayed another day.
For those who are also out wandering aimlessly around the southwest who also want to possibly find campsites, I can only recommend this one to people in SUVs and pickups. It isn’t the kind of track you want to drive an RV on. However, there is what promises to be a nice BLM campground very close to this location, I believe it’s called Pitt Creek or Pitt Valley or Pitt Bluff or Pitt something. It costs money. That’s why I’m not there. But it doesn’t cost a lot of money, maybe $5 a night (or $2.50 if you are the Vagabond Tourist and you have a golden age pass). So maybe if you’re driving an RV you could check that out.
Here is the storm coming over the Sierra toward my campsite. The temperature dropped 20 degrees and I hunkered down under torrential rain (24 hours) and howling winds (36 hours) that made my rig crack, groan buckle and rock…it was NOT FUN.
Here’s the aftermath of the storm, looking west to the Sierra.
And here’s what I now have to get through, basically, to get back to Saline Valley. Now we’re looking east, not exactly toward the pass, but sort of. Maybe we’ll try that tomorrow.
Saline Valley Hot Springs
As I mentioned, our goal was the Saline Valley hot springs, or warm springs as the National Park Service refers to them. They are just fabulous. and teeming with people, which is sort of a bummer. Most of these people are not wearing any clothing, and it tamped down my zeal for photographic documentation. I didn’t feel all that comfortable jamming a camera in peoples’ faces to take pictures of the lovely pools when they were all full of nude people. Or clothed people, for that matter. I wanted to photograph the POOLS, not the people, and I couldn’t seem to make it happen.
At the upper springs, where we were camped, the pools were…well, just pools. Clean, lovely cement pools and all that, but nothing special to look at. The lower springs pools had some pretty workmanship, inlays or mosaics, and would have made a nice picture if not obscured by bodies. I plan to return ASAP and will try to catch them empty. There was also a nice lawn at the lower springs. Weird to have a lawn in the middle of the desert, but it’s more of an oasis than a desert right around the pools. They are surrounded by palm trees (see below).
The rest of the landscape is typical desert, as you can see. Fortunately, I am extremely fond of the desert. I chose not to use the pools, which are officially closed due to Covid, but everyone else was using them. I used the inexhaustible supply of hot water to do laundry and take showers instead. I could do that without cozying up to a bunch of potentially infectious strangers.
Perhaps I should mention, since you may want to see the hot springs yourself (which I highly recommend) that the roads in are bad, particularly the last 5 miles or so after you turn off Saline Valley road and head across the playa to the springs themselves. People drive all sorts of vehicles in there, so it really depends on 1) how determined you are, and 2) how willing you are to tear your vehicle up. The majority of people drive pickups and SUV’s. The most prevalent rig was a truck or SUV with a rooftop tent. Pickups with popup campers (Hawks or Palominos) were the second most prevalent. There was a van or two. A passenger car would make it, but it wouldn’t be fun. An RV would probably make it (a smaller one), but it would take a LOT of abuse. The photo below shows a couple of rigs. Both of these were pickups with popup shells, although one looks like a trailer (it is not). The road issue is roughness as opposed to clearance. I did bottom out my trike rack a couple of times, but just touches, nothing serious. In my old RV, I would have been hyperventilating and growing ulcers, and I would have scraped the bottom of the door frame getting to the upper springs. I cannot recommend driving a travel trailer in here, although I’m sure someone has done it — someone has done almost everything. I understand these “someones” have also, on occasion, broken axles getting in, so….
This is one of the upper springs pools from my campsite. As you see, it is a clump of palm trees surrounded by desert.
Here is moonset (at sunrise) looking northwest from the upper springs.
North pass into Saline Valley
Our goal was the Saline Valley hot springs, and when cold temperatures and the threat of a major windstorm drove us out of Harkless Flat, we went a short way into Death Valley National Park, near the north pass into Saline Valley (name unknown) and walked up to this old cabin to see if we could get a cell signal.
At the rear of this cabin (or should we call it a shack?) is a deck with a million-dollar view. I believe it looks toward Eureka Valley. Inside the cabin is a very weird selection of supplies such as Clorox and a first aid kit. The first aid kit certainly seems prudent, but why bleach?
When the cabin is renovated, as I’m sure it some day will be, I suggest that we provide access to the deck from inside the cabin, or at least a pass-through window. Currently, residents and visitors must exit the cabin via its only door (which you see in this photo), clamber over some rocks beside the chimney, and climb a couple of rickety steps (with no railing…is that to code?) to get onto the deck. Now this is not something we want to have to do when we are carrying, say, a tray of cocktails for our guests, is it? It creates an inconvenience when we’re trying to have a tennis party or some such thing.
Note that some upgrades have already been done: there’s glass in the windows. Myself, I would have made them capable of opening, but maybe they were renovating on a shoestring budget.
This is the view from the deck. Pretty nice, huh?
Harkless Flat
Continuing south and east, we popped into the Inyo National Forest to check out Harkless Flat. I can’t recommend the road in for RV people. In fact, please don’t try it. There’s no cell service (until you reach the end of the road) so you can’t call for help when you get stuck or tear the bottom out of your rig. I would never bring my MH in here, and I brought my MH all sorts of places I had no business going, which is why it is such a dilapidated mess. This is pickup country. Even I touched bottom three times on the way to this campsite, which was a fabulous one. I bottomed out because of my blankety-blank trike rack, which is way too low to the ground. I will have to get the welding shop to rebuild the rack to reduce these problems which are seriously cramping my style. Very irksome.
View from our campsite. We’re looking across the Owens Valley toward the eastern Sierra. The body of water is the intake for the LA city water supply. You may be aware that LA pretty much owns the entire Owens River, and in fact, consumes the entire Owens River. There isn’t much Owens River left once you get south of Owens Lake because LA drinks it all.
Walking down (and I do mean DOWN) from our campsite, you encounter this mine, which I think, by consulting the Forest Service map, is probably the Blake mine. I have no clue what Mr. Blake might have been mining here…could have been gold, but there are other possibilities as well. There was a ruined cabin a few hundred feet from our campsite, and then this mine about half a mile away. How Mr. Blake got his ore from this mine up to the “road” is a total mystery. That is the way it is with these old mines…the miners were obviously much hardier and WAY more determined than modern people. It was hard to get myself to this mine and back, much less a ton of rocks. This weird wheelbarrow-cum-ore-cart wouldn’t have fit on the path, even if it didn’t weigh a hundred pounds (empty). Note that the path is visible in this photo. You are looking at the path. So that’s how great a path it is. It seems more likely that Mr. Blake used his ore cart (before most of its wheels went missing) to haul ore out of the mine. Maybe he had a hapless animal of some kind to actually get the ore to the “road”, and a team of hapless animals to get the ore down the “road” to the REAL road several miles away. The mine had to have been a more-or-less successful concern because there was a cabin. Lots of mines didn’t even get that far.
Blake Mine
Another view of the LA water intake, this time on the way to the Blake Mine. Just because the clouds are nice.
Tungsten Hills
I actually made two stops on the way to the Tungsten Hills but took, no photos. The first was a brief overnighter at Crane Falls on the Snake. Acceptable but nothing to write home about. I probably wouldn’t bother to go back there.
The second was at Spencer Hot Springs in Nevada, where I was hoping for several restful days. Unfortunately, right on my heels was an arctic front bringing 10 degree temperatures. I have camped in 10 degree temperatures. In fact, I have camped in 0 degree temperatures, but the experience was not pleasant enough so I cared to repeat it, so I fled south, winding up in the Tungsten Hills near Bishop, CA.
There was a sweet little creek a few feet from our campsite. This creek occupies what used to be a roadbed an unknown number of years ago, and about a zillion people drove down this road to where it dead ends in the creek, apparently thinking the road still continues into the Tungsten Hills. There is no turnaround at the dead end, so everyone used our campsite to turn around. Well, that is reasonable. They have to turn around, after all, but it got very wearisome after several days, particularly over the weekend when a few of these folks appeared at night, long after I would be driving down roads I was unfamiliar with, having to back out of dead ends between giant boulders in the dark. The first couple of times it happened, I felt pretty sorry for them. It was a bad spot to navigate in the dark going backwards. After that, it just got annoying.
Here’s the end of the road a few feet from our campsite. Apparently you used to be able to drive across this creek, around the giant boulder in the center of the picture and then on into the hills. Not so much any more.
Here’s the Sierra from our campsite
And here’s the Sierra at sunrise, also from our campsite. This is off of Buttermilk Road, for those who are actually driving around looking for this campsite.
What else? The Snake River.
And now for something completely different: the Snake River. Oh, right. Now for something completely the same: the Snake River.
This time we are at Swan Falls (which is actually a dam, not a falls) near Boise in the Snake River Birds of Prey National Wildlife Management Area. The SRBOPNWMA is mostly not-very-scenic desert. I have camped there numerous times but never taken a single picture because there is basically nothing to photograph except military vehicles conducting training exercises on dusty roads going nowhere. You probably aren’t supposed to photograph them anyway. I didn’t want to get my camera confiscated. This actually almost happened to me once when I was taking pictures of birds flying around outside one of the gates of the Pentagon a number of years ago. They didn’t take my camera, but they went through my photos and made me delete all the ones taken near the Pentagon, even though they were looking away from the Pentagon at large birds in the air. I didn’t have any interest in photographing the Pentagon, but they take no chances at the Pentagon. Just in case a reflection of the Pentagon might show up in the photo, I guess, they made me delete the photos. Perhaps one of the birds might be carrying a dental mirror? Not being an expert, the sky and birds looked no different to me than skies and birds at many other locations nowhere near the Pentagon, but that might just be my ignorance talking. Besides, if the skies and birds all look the same, why do I need to photograph them outside the Pentagon? Good question. They just happened to be there, and I just happened to be there, so I leaped at the opportunity.
Anyway, I’m wandering off the point. The point is that Swan Falls is by far the nicest camping spot I have ever seen at SRBOPNWMA, and I highly recommend it. There were no military vehicles, but many boaters and campers. On the downside, there were also plenty of biting flies, which really sucked. It was hot and I wanted to sit outside, but I don’t like biting flies.
By the dam, which you must pass on the way to these campsites, there is a lovely park (do not ride your bike on the lawn…I was busted for this) with lots of interesting historical information about the dam, which was built in 1901.
View up the Snake from Swan Falls campsite
Giant Cloud of Brown Glop Over Hells Canyon
Further along the Snake River we come to Hat Point in the Hells Canyon National Recreation
Area. I have been wanting to see Hells Canyon for years, and in fact, tried to see it a few years ago to no avail. I stopped at a “viewpoint” back then and took pictures of…nothing, really. Not a glimpse of the river could be seen, although a helpful informational sign assured me that the river was there, 6000 feet down in the canyon whose bottom was invisible from the viewpoint.
So, this year I armed myself with a completely new rig. This enabled me to get up the road to Hat Point, and to camp once I had gotten there. As you can see, it was very smoky there. But there, totally, completely, gloriously visible, is….THE ACTUAL SNAKE RIVER, ACTUALLY RUNNING THROUGH HELLS CANYON!!!! 8000 feet below Hat Point, I finally saw Hells Canyon. OK, it looks the way the smoggy LA skyline did in the 1960’s, but there it is. I threw a party to celebrate. Everyone on the guest list (which included me and my cat) attended, and everyone was very impressed with Hells Canyon.
It’s there! The river! Despite the brown glop, you can still see the river!
The party was held in this venue, which we got for the reasonable price of $0:
The nano-house, which I also call The Tortoise
Although not invited, these citizens of Hat Point loomed over the party, casting a damper over everyone’s spirits. Is it just me, or do they look……….joyless? Being a tree must be tough at Hat Point.
On the way down from Hat Point the next day, we took a brief respite from plummeting down the 16% grade (with scary drop-offs, one lane and no pullouts) to see another, less smoky view of Hells Canyon.
For all of you intrepid travelers out there who also yearn to see Hells Canyon, let me emphasize that I cannot recommend that anyone in a rig bigger than a pickup truck drive the road to Hat Point. Once the top of the 7-mile, 16% grade is reached, the road is good, but the grade is NOT FOR RV’s.
Once again, no river to speak of, but at least the glop has cleared a bit.
Cottonwood Pass
We crossed this pass going from Crested Butte to Leadville, and, unlike a lot of the passes through the Colorado Rockies, it’s actually paved all the way. It’s over 12,000 feet (it could’ve been 12,500, I forget), so of course the view is amazing. There is a trail taking off from the parking lot that goes 1/4 of a mile to a viewpoint. I walked this trail, and the length of time it took was unbelievable. Nobody on a mountain bike passed me this time. Everyone else’s eyes were bugging out and chests were heaving just like mine. What would have been a few minutes’ romp at 4,000 or 5,000 feet was a major hike at 12 or 12.5. It was worth it, though. I’d do it again in a heartbeat, but I would put on my boots and braces next time. I figured that would be a waste of effort for 1/4 of a mile, but I was wrong about that.
Tarn up near the pass
After a brief summer in Idaho, back on the road in Riparia, Washington
Oh look. Trees. Aren’t they nice. Perhaps you are wondering: “Why are you taking pictures of trees, as if they were in some way remarkable?” Well, they kind of are remarkable when you compare them to the miles and miles of desolation that surrounds them. They are no doubt what gives ‘Riparia’ its name. Below the lovely trees there is a view from Riparia across the Snake River. It shows what everything else around Riparia looks like. So Riparia is like a little slice of heaven in the middle of a giant wasteland. I guess it wasn’t a large enough slice of heaven to keep anyone there, as the actual town of Riparia is a ghost town.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the desert. I expend a lot of time, money and effort to travel in the desert every year because I really love it. But there’s something about a lush, riparian landscape in the middle of the desert that you can’t help rejoicing over.
I spent a brief and hellish summer in northern Idaho building a new place to live. It was hellish because it was over 100 degrees (doesn't happen in northern Idaho) and we were choking on smoke from numerous forest fires. The smoke was so bad I couldn’t see across my property sometimes. And these conditions lasted for weeks. They did not relent until it started to rain, and that was when I threw in the towel and departed. Rain makes a nice sound on the roof, but I can’t stand dark, gloomy days. I just want to go to sleep until the sun comes out again. Thankfully, I finished my building project just in time to leave town when the rain started, and I now have a brand, spanking new rig. Gone is the 35 foot motorhome, and I now have a nano-house in the back of a pickup truck that’s about 6.5 x 5.5 feet. Nice and maneuverable. AND it has 4WD. So I’m off for the wide open spaces.
There they are: miles of brown hills. That’s what half the states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho look like.
Crested Butte
So this is one of my new favorite places on earth: Crested Butte, CO. My brother did his doctoral research near here; that’s how I heard of it. We camped on the banks of a lovely creek…could it have been Lead Creek? That doesn’t sound very lovely. Maybe it was Cement Creek. Anyway, it was much lovelier than its name suggests.
I hiked up out of the valley to see what I could see. The trail was punishing, and even though I’d been riding my trike a great deal (I put at least 300 miles on it over the winter), I could barely stagger up the trail. Perhaps the fact that we were camped at 9,000 feet didn’t help, but still. How annoying. It was only a mile or so for crying out loud, and I’d been riding at 7500 or 8000 feet the week before. Anyway, as I huffed and puffed and wondered if I was going to make it to the top, this young guy on a mountain bike came screaming past me…IN THIRD GEAR!!!! How demoralizing. I was so disgusted with myself I could hardly stand it. I did manage to hobble up to the top of the ridge, but not much further, and really, I barely made it back down to the campsite (going down is actually more difficult for me than climbing — I’d rather climb both ways but for reasons I don’t fully understand, if one way is uphill the other way is invariably downhill. It doesn't seem right, but that has been my experience over many years).
In any case, it was lush and green and the weather was perfect. I simply adore Colorado in the Spring, and the higher the altitude, the better I like it.
View from beside the RV. This is the mountain I would have LIKED to hike to.
And here’s the view looking the other way.
Gateway, Colorado
The whole point of going through Miami was to make our way to Colorado before the biting flies appear in late June. And the first place we stayed in Colorado was Gateway. How’s this for a campsite? Sweet, huh? Gateway is on the Dolores River. If you have a 4WD, you can get to Moab from here, or so it appears from the map. I don’t have a 4wd. I rode my trike up the road 7 or 8 miles and got into Utah, but turned back when the hills got so steep I lost traction. Below you can see the giant tree I camped under. It was the usual Comedy of Terrors getting into the campsite with my ginormous RV, which was not made for turning sharp corners, going down washed-out roads or fitting under trees. Thankfully, I punched no holes in the rig (this time), bashed no dents in my doorframe (this time) and managed to execute a graceful 1,000 point turn to circumnavigate a few large rocks and wedge myself into a space where there were no low branches. This time.
It was in Gateway, however, that I finally lost patience with my rig, which I have clung to like a limpet for the last 7 years. There was a washed-out section right at the top of the hill as I turned to get down to the river, and the whole time I was in the campsite (3 weeks) I fretted about my ability to get out again. I decided I couldn’t take it anymore…I had to have a 4WD rig with some maneuverability. More on that later. For the time being, though, let’s enjoy Gateway, which is awesomely beautiful.
Cliffs around Gateway campsite in the early morning.
I rarely score a campsite like this. And indeed, I probably shouldn’t have scored this one. I got it because the sane, normal person pulling a trailer that was on the road in front of me rejected it due to good sense. Not having good sense myself, I promptly took the site and blessed my good fortune.
The whole Dolores canyon around Gateway and toward Moab looks like this. Massive red cliffs. Gorgeous.
Looking across the river from the campsite
This is a sentimental inclusion to commemorate the last trip in my Flamingo Flyer. I love you, but you’ve taken your last bash, ding, hole and dent from me. Bless you.
Miami/Globe/AZ 288
I love AZ 288 out of Miami, AZ. It’s a spot I return to every couple of years. And 2021 was no exception. I returned to the same campsite I occupied a couple of years ago…and suffered the same excruciating fear that I went through last time I came here. The “road” to the site crosses benches of sharp rock. They hammer my tires, and I scrape bottom several times getting up and down. Really, this is another site I have no business being in at all. But the view! The view! Risks must be taken in service to the view.
I don’t think I’ll come to this particular site again. It’s just too nerve-wracking. There are others (I found them on my trike) that have equally good views and are somewhat less punishing on the tires. I couldn’t get to any of them in the RV because the road in was too uneven and the curves too sharp, but I can get there in my new rig.
I barely got out of this spot because even my normal 1,000 point turn was inadequate to handle the large boulders that crowded my way when trying to turn around at the top of the “road”. I scraped a couple of times but thankfully no holes.
Frustratingly, the light was difficult and I’m not sure I really captured how glorious the view of Lake Roosevelt was, so I snapped a cactus flower to make up for it.
Lake Roosevelt from campsite on AZ 288. There’s a fire back there somewhere south of Miami generating smoke.
Bluff after bluff…there are some great campsites on some of those bluffs. If you can get there.
We all love cactus flowers, right? They were in bloom when I camped near Miami.
Trona Pinnacles
Here are the Trona Pinnacles. They are basically towers of mud (well, they WERE mud at one time) that formed under water. Which is crazy considering where they now are, the middle of a waterless desert.
We spent a week in the parking lot in front of the Trona Pinnacles because camping was sketchy. If I had had a 4WD truck, I would have camped among the pinnacles themselves, but I didn’t. The issue was not that I needed 4WD to get to a site, it was that the sites were small and I was large. It’s not easy being an RV. This was before I decided I didn’t want to be an RV anymore, but it was on the way to that point.
While at the Trona Pinnacles, I rode my trike all through the pinnacles, then I attempted to reach the “lake” several miles away. I didn’t reach it because it is impassible. The “lake” is really a giant alkali flat that has been mined for various minerals that precipitate out of water (not surface water…the water is pumped from wells). I forget what minerals they are. Stuff like phosphate or boron or some such thing. There are many of them. There is a huge “mine” (processing plant) across the “lake” from the pinnacles. The “lake” itself looks snow-white from a distance, which is as close as I ever got to it. I would have photographed it, but, well, why? It was a sliver of white across the desert plain. It would have looked like nothing. You would have thought I was crazy (why did she photograph a large, dusty flat with a few bits of desert grass among many tire tracks? What was she thinking?)
Trona Pinnacles
More pinnacles. To give you an idea of the scale, there is an outhouse in the foreground for comparison.
Alabama Hills
When Autumn set in and it started getting gloomy, we headed out of Idaho meaning to recreate in Oregon for a while. However, we were shortly overtaken by an arctic cold front that sent temperatures plunging into the single digits, so we made a run for the desert and wound up in the Alabama Hills. The Alabama Hills Recreation Area is in the Owens Valley near Big Pine. Lots of advertisements are shot there, particularly the kind that show beefy vehicles rumbling triumphantly over challenging terrain…you know: conquer the great outdoors in your 4WD truck, that sort of thing. Because it’s well known that when you buy a vehicle, you actually purchase an entire lifestyle.
To give you a hint as to the exact kind of lifestyle you might be able to buy if you have several tens of thousands of dollars to spare for a large truck, here are some pictures of the Alabama Hills. We actually had trouble finding a campsite there because the whole place was lousy with people fleeing the fires that were all over the Sierra. It is the “gateway to Mt. Whitney”, which some may recognize as the highest mountain in the lower 48 states. Mt. Whitney actually appears in some of these photos, but it is hard to distinguish it from other, almost-as-high peaks in the eastern Sierra.
Mt. Whitney at sunrise. Which one is Mt. Whitney? It’s sort of back there among the jagged peaks in the background to the leftish.
Heart-shaped rock at the Alabama Hills
Boot Arch
This is what the Alabama Hills are famous for. Just imagine a giant truck surging along in the foreground, bumping and weaving as the rocks loom ever closer…will we make it? Can it happen? YES! We are victorious! <insert brand name of truck here> can take you where no man has gone before! Except the Vagabond Tourist, on foot, tottering around in braces with a hiking pole in each hand.
Again looking toward Whitney
One last picture looking toward the Sierra…this is really a sky-scape.
The Selkirks
So, while CoVID was raging and I was stuck at home, I spent my time exploring the Selkirks. I’ve lived in Bonners Ferry for 22 years and hardly knew anything about them. It turns out they are absolutely swarming with gorgeous little lakes. Even I, who can barely walk down to the mailbox, am able to reach some of these lakes with braces, hiking poles, monster boots and a lot of persistence. I even dusted off my backpack and took a few two-night trips. I must say, it was tough. My brother, who went with me, has the patience of a saint. In no other way would it be possible to go backpacking with me. Sadly, I cannot hike more than 2 or 3 miles (with a pack on), so I could only go to a few places. Since my brother’s idea of a hike is to scale a 14,000 foot mountain, walk 20 miles and come home by moonlight, all while wearing sandals and carrying 70 pounds of camera gear, he must, to put it mildly, scale back a bit to hike with me. But he was willing, so off we went, and I had a great time finding lakes I had no idea existed in my own backyard. Here are a few of them.
Trout Lake. This one was tough to get to because the last quarter or half mile requires clambering among boulders. This is not something I do well even with all my braces on. Worth it. Only one campsite though, so at your own risk.
This was my favorite: Upper Ball Lake. Getting back from here was a nightmare. We spent 3 nights, and it poured rain the last night. The way down is steep and rocky, and my knees kept collapsing and throwing me onto the muddy ground. From which I can hardly get up with my pack on. By the time I reached the car. I was on my hands and knees. Did I say hiking requires persistence? I think I said that. Even so, I simply adore Upper Ball Lake.
The water of Upper Ball Lake is SO CLEAR! All these mountain tarns are clear, but Upper Ball was clear even in comparison with other, similar lakes. There was a remarkable absence of algae even near the shore. Sometimes it was hard to tell which rocks were under water and which were not. Gorgeous.
This is my brother doing what I want to do and cannot at Middle Roman Nose Lake. This was our first or second hike, before I bought my braces, and I simply couldn’t manage the boulders. So instead, I watched my brother wade effortlessly through the lake to catch a view of the upper end, fuming with envy, then I forced him to show me all the pictures he snapped.
Middle Roman Nose Lake
This is the waterfall coming out of Upper Roman Nose Lake into Middle Roman Nose Lake. After I failed to wade through the lake, I more-or-less (less, really) bushwhacked around the lake to see what was up there, and this is what I found.
Upper Roman Nose Lake near our campsite
This is also Upper Roman Nose, also near our campsite, only looking toward the Origin of it All, Roman Nose, looming in the background above the lake. From this angle, it doesn’t look any more like a nose than about a hundred other peaks in the Selkirks. My brother climbed Roman Nose (show-off). What he found up there was an old fire lookout that had burned down and a ROAD. Yeah, I can’t even climb the stupid thing and there’s a road. Or at least there used to be a road. It is not in good repair because the fire lookout is no longer used.