California - Day 2 - Mojave National Preserve

Needles KOA, Needles

Wednesday, 2 March 2022

I'm pleased to report that the amount of black stuff floating around in my eye is far less than it was.  In fact, I only see it now and then, and even then it's not much.  I'm hopeful I'll soon have a full recovery from that episode.

today's route - I only went as far as Baker
and then came back on the same road

On the road

I heard on the radio that the Arizona GOP was asking the state Supreme Court to declare mail-in balloting unconstitutional.  The GOP is citing the AZ constitution that says issues should be decided "in such manner that the electors may express at the polls."  Their position is that "at the polls" means only voting in person.  Not coincidentally, about 90% of AZ voters vote by mail.   Hard to believe the court would go for that argument, but these days you never know.

I changed stations and heard excerpts from Biden's State of the Union speech.  Then the host said commentary would follow some commercials and his "go-to source" was InfoWars.  Knowing that InfoWars insisted that the Sandy Hook massacre of children was a hoax, I decided he was yet another unreliable source of information.

Then still another station informed me about the tweets being published by GOP members of Congress during the State of the Union speech - with some of them twisting his words and being really derogatory about his character and mental capacity.  And I thought it was no wonder Putin thought the US - led by supposedly weak and senile Biden - wouldn't respond to his invasion of Ukraine or be willing and able to rally Europe to respond.  If he was getting his news about US attitudes from the US GOP, then he wasn't hearing about reality.

In fact, the more I thought about this political situation, the more upset and unhappy I got.  I finally decided to leave the radio off and let the landscape I was passing roll through me and calm me down.  And it did - though it took some time.

I took this photo while I was driving, which is why there's a pole in it.

That's not a pale range in front of a dark range but instead one range that's 2-toned.  That land between me and the mountains was pretty much what I saw all day.  Vast areas of sand - or pale dirt - covered with a variety of cactus.  I saw a train in the distance, and at an exit I saw a gas station complex, but otherwise what you see here is what I saw for many miles.  For some reason, I didn't find it the mind-numbingly boring drive I found on my way to Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats.  It helped that today was blue sky and sunshine, as you can see above, unlike that leaden-gray sky I had that day in Utah.

Mojave National Preserve

This seems to be a low-budget protected area, because I didn't see a single park ranger while I was here.  I had to drive half-way through the area to find any information about this place, which means I spent the first part of the drive flying blind, so to speak.  I won't make you do that.

map of the preserve

It was a 60-mile drive to get from Needles to the Kelbaker road, which is the red line at the far west of the preserve area.  I'd intended to take that road north-ish to Baker, then drive east on I-15 to that next red line, and take that back south to I-40.  But it ended up taking so long to do just the part to Baker that I decided to go back the way I came, as being the shorter route.

The preserve touts 4 main attractions.  These were the 2 along the road I took.

These were the 2 on the other side of the preserve.

As it turned out, I saw lots of Joshua trees on the drive I took, plus I have a reservation to stay in the campground in Joshua Tree National Monument tomorrow night, so I didn't fret too much about missing the other side.

Where I picked up this information was at the Kelso Train Depot, which is supposed to have a visitor center there.  That center was firmly closed, though at least there were some exhibits to tell us what we were seeing.  But the depot is itself a point of interest.

Kelso Train Depot
built 1924

Pretty gorgeous, isn't it?  And that's thanks to the National Park Service and local concerned citizens.  As you might expect, there's a railroad line this depot was built to service, and that line is still in operation.

This train came in while we were there and sat for a while to allow another train to pass in the opposite direction.

Anyway, Union Pacific Railroad, which owned the depot, decided in 1985 it was no longer needed.  And to keep it from vandalism and becoming a legal liability, they decided to raze it.

Concerned citizens managed to get that stopped but couldn't then come up with the money to renovate it, so they got their members of Congress involved.  The BLM already owned land in the area, so Congress added this to what they had, followed by the transfer of title to the National Park Service, which did a major fixing-up job.  A shame the restaurant isn't still in use, but at least the outside is back to its original glory.

The center had several exhibits including the history of the railroad line here, the first depot building, and the local jail.  But they had several about the Desert Tortoise and the need to protect it.  They were all displayed in windows, so some of my photos are fighting the glare.

These were under the heading "Why are the tortoises in danger?"

That one about the ravens actually didn't make sense to me: if the problem is that ravens eat turtles because they're hungry, then it seems like the solution should be to feed the ravens, where this sign says never feed them - which keeps them hungry, doesn't it?

I kept my eyes open for turtles crossing the road, but none of them did while I was there.

Baker

I could see Baker from more than 5 miles away, which I find remarkable.  Also remarkable was the price I had to pay there for gasoline: $5.19/gallon.

Besides being so handy to the national preserve, Baker has another claim to fame: the World's Tallest Thermometer.

It's a little hard to see because it's just a few lighted bulbs, but this sign says it's 73°.  I didn't want to zoom any closer because the car and trees and buildings show how tall it is: 134'.  This website gives the backstory and some of the statistics.  https://www.roadsideamerica.com/thermometer

I was glad I'd already decided to drive back by the same route because it was almost 1:00 by the time we left Baker, and I knew we still had a lot of miles to cover.

Oddly, if I hadn't just come from there, I wouldn't have found the right road because it wasn't labeled.  No sign saying this way to the national preserve or anything.

Back to the Mojave

It occurred to me driving back that I'd made a big mistake by not leaving Needles until 9:00 this morning.  Sunrise was just after 6:00, and if I'd made an effort to come earlier in the day I might have been able to see some critters.  As it was, I didn't see anything but ravens.

I guess I've got this mental image of desert as being flat and sandy - and you've seen in these photos there's plenty of that.  But there're also plenty of hills and mountains, which I didn't expect at all.

And then there were these cinder cone volcanoes with their black basalt lava flows.

I keep running across these cinder cone volcanoes.  These - the park service says there are 32 of them here - started forming more than 7,000,000 years ago, and more of them kept on erupting until only about 10,000 years ago.  Here's the NPS brochure about the volcanoes here in Mojave, designated the Cinder Cone National Natural Landmark.  https://www.nps.gov/moja/cinder-cones  Here's another view of them.

Between these and the Kelso Train Depot I came across quite a stand of Joshua trees.

So much for the flat sandy expanse of my imagination.

more Joshua trees

I'd noticed the turn for the Kelso Dunes on the way north and decided to make the side trip to see them on the way back.  But when I got to the turn I discovered it was an unpaved road, and I'd have to drive it for 3 miles out and 3 miles back.  The paved road was rough enough and I just couldn't bring myself to think driving an unpaved one was a good idea.  But I'd like to come back sometime and see them.  They're the 3rd highest dunes in the US and among the few that boom.  And if you want an explanation for that, here's the NPS link.   https://www.nps.gov/moja/kelso-dunes

Against my expectation, I found this to be a fascinating place and would like to come back again (though clearly not in the summer when the temps can be overwhelming).

Back to Needles

I saw a CA license plate that said COOL 4X4 - it was a big black pickup, of course.

And I saw another CA license plate that said LATEADA.  I spent some time working on that and finally decided it wasn't about some girl named Ada who was always late but instead an attempt to say la-di-da (meaning snooty, sort of).

The long drive back gave me plenty of time to think about the price I'd had to pay for gasoline and to wonder if it'd be like that from now on.  I've learned that California has the highest gas tax in the country, and I've cleverly chosen to wait until we're having inflation so gas prices were going up anyway, and now with this insane war of Putin's they'll keep on going up, and I'm visiting the 3rd largest state in the union where there are a lot of miles to cover.  Bad timing.

But a good day to drive to Mojave.