The old Mojave Road - Part 1

[Toy Man]

The Mojave Road ? A Trip Report

The first week in March I was invited to tag-along on a Mojave Road trip.
This is a short trip report. I have a longer one with pictures, plus more pictures, Garmin and National Geographic?s TOPO! plus Google Earth waypoints and tracks. Email me if you are interested in copies of any of these.

Dick Hamilton ? Toy Man
thepcman@digital-rivers.com


3-17-2007 to 3-19-2007

Saturday the 17th. Needles California. Nice warm sunny morning. I take my time and then drive north along the river towards Laughlin NV. I?m to meet the group at the AVI casino on the Indian reservation just south of Laughlin at 8:00am. I find another member and we wait for the rest of the group to straggle in. Everyone then has breakfast/brunch. They joke about being on Pass Patrol time. Everyone but me has been on Pass Patrol outings before.

The group: Larry Heck (Outlaw), Ed (Snapshot), Bob and Evelyn (Sundance and Sunshine), Gene and Sue (Bad Hat) and I. Larry has delivered a motor home to LA and rented a Jeep for the trip. It is a new soft top 4 door Unlimited model with a little under 10,000 miles on it. Because it was given/sold to the rental agency as a factory demo, it cannot be resold and will be sent to the wrecking yard after this trip. Ed drives an old Toyota 4Runner. Bob and Evelyn have a new Blazer ZR2 that does quite well on the trip. Gene and Sue have a really nice Jeep Wrangler with 35? tires, lockers, etc.
It is crammed full of their camping gear.

10:20am ? We leave the AVI casino parking lot and drive a mile or two north along the river to Mile 0.0 of the Mojave Road. Across the river is the site of the old Fort Mojave.

10:45am ? We start on our journey. Because Larry is writing notes, taking GPS readings and photographs for a future magazine article, we drive slow and stop at every intersection, turn or interesting spot. Everyone in the group is either retired or damn close to it so no lead foot drivers here. Fine with me.

We start at the river at about 500 feet above sea level and do a slow climb up a ridge. Nothing but rocks and small brush. Yep ? looks like desert. Over the ridge and down into Piute Valley.

Across the valley and then we take a little side trip to the site of old Fort Piute. Stop there for a short lunch. It?s is warm but does not feel hot. The forecast was for the upper 90?s.

Off again and we begin climbing out of the valley. This is probably the roughest section of the trip but no problems. I don?t recall having to shift into 4 wheel drive. The summit and then a short drop into Lanfair Valley at 3500 feet. Noticeably cooler here. We begin seeing our first Joshua trees and then we are in a forest of them. Easy going across the valley. It is 6:00 pm by the time we near the west side of the valley and it becomes hard to drive as the sun is shining directly into our eyes so Larry declares camp at an open area. This about Mile 48 of the route, elevation 4500 feet.

Everyone does their own thing for supper and then it?s sundown and time for me to hit the sack. I decide not to setup the tent but just sleep on the Roll-A-Cot in my light weight sleeping bag. Later that night I wake up to a strong, cold wind which blows all night. My body is warm but my exposed head is cold. Finally get up and get a small blanket out of the car to put over my head. Sort of works but in the early morning I give up and move to the car. First light about 6 and good light at 6:30. A pretty sunrise at 7. A light breakfast and then as I am about a quarter tank of gas down, I decide to empty the two 2.5 gallon containers of gas I have with me into my gas tank. These gas cans are a type that is new to me and they require a special filler spout to empty them. I can?t find the damn spout but I remember seeing that Gene and Sue have the same type of can so maybe I can borrow their spout. Oops - there is my spout hidden under a pile. Good thing I found it because I learn that Gene does not have a spout for his can and was going to rely on suctioning out gas via a piece of tubing. Empty the gas cans, clean up the area, pack, take a short hike and then we are off at 9:00 am. The wind has stopped and it is a pretty morning under a bright blue sky.

The drop down into the wash just before Rock Spring gives our suspensions a good work out. We have a nice stop at the old military outpost site at Rock Spring and then drive around the hill to look at the old rock cabin on top of the hill. It is cool and breezy when we leave the cabin.

We arrive at Government Holes at 11am. This is an old watering hole for travelers and cattle. Signs of scattered habitation visible in the distance. Later as we break over a ridge, the sky turns from clear to smoggy. We drop down to the valley floor and cross the paved Kelso-Cima highway. Stop and talk to a national park ranger at the crossing then we continue on doing a slow climb up the other side of the valley.

We stop for lunch at Marl Springs, another old army outpost. Perfect temperature with a slight breeze. Someone says the temperature was supposed to reach 102 in the Mojave Desert today.

At mile 74.3 we see the flagpole above the mailbox. This is WAY out in the middle of nowhere. We sign the register. This helps BLM and others determine the traffic on The Mojave Road. Next to the flagpole is a short column with a steering wheel attached to it. It is memorial to a 4x4 wheeler. Someone notices a bunch of frog statues in the brush behind the flagpole. We go to investigate. It is a frog shrine ? something I have not heard of but Gene says there are several in S. California. We add some coins to the collection that exists on the ground around the frogs.

From the mailbox, we drop down the ridge onto a plain. There is a nice high speed graded road all the way across to the Aiken Mine road. From there we drop into the Willow wash and start driving in dry, loose deep sand. I drop into 4x4 hi, 2nd gear and keep the speed about 20 mph. Sort of squirrely but no problems. We continue picking our way down thru wash and then a short up/down followed by a bunch of flat nothing. We keep on until we reach the edge of Soda Lake, about route mile 96. We pick out a camp site by an old abandoned mill site and drive nine miles north to the town of Baker for gas and dinner. It is turning dark as we begin driving back. The wind comes up as we begin the setup camp. It dies down after about an hour but I am long asleep in my tent.

Continued in Part 2