Bailey (the cat)and I head south in the winter to explore the back roads, deserts, coasts, forests, beaches, of the southern US! I 'graduated' from full time work, and have been enjoying the complete freedom ever since. I expect to be in southern climes during the winter times and all over Alberta and Canada during the summer. Come along for the ride. (Photo is of former co-pilot Harley).
Well, my last two blog posts have never showed up on the sidebars of other blogs that link to mine.
And most of the readers find the blog from those links - which have not been updated!
All I can think of is that Blogger doesn't like my use of Open Live Writer to edit my blog?
Thanks a lot Blogger :-(
If this one shows up, feel free to go back and check the last two posts that you likely missed!
(For unknown reasons, my previous blog post did not show up on the sidebar of any other blogs, so you way well have missed it, if that’s the way you usually get here! Maybe Blogger is just upset that I’m using Open Live Writer? Time will tell if this one updates properly …) In case you missed it, here’s a LINK to the last post.
We had a very enjoyable week long stay at Six Mile Cove on Lake Mohave (Colorado River), within Lake Mead National Recreation Area. There was a fairly constant wind that attracted a few kite boarders, but it may have also kept any bugs away?
It was very quiet there overall, and there were a couple of days when there was no one else there at all. We had the whole place to ourselves! Even on a weekend! At most, there might have been four rigs there for a couple of the nights – mostly just small RV’s and a van or two. No noise, traffic, music, or annoying generators.
It appears that this place can turn into quite a zoo in summer, as evidenced by these two screen shots I took from youtube videos!
You wouldn’t catch me here in a million years with crowds like this. I imagine the washboard on the six mile access road must have been intense with that amount of traffic.
It does appear from these photos though, that there are only a few RV’s to spend the night, but I expect that the long weekend ‘day’ users may have been partying a good part of the night as well?This time at least the road in was in pretty good condition, with minimal washboard.
Not much of a crowd here!
Last year at this time, the park had two gate lanes open, but this year I did not see it in operation, but the Ranger did make an appearance at the cove most days, and park staff did come to clean the outhouses.
We had a problem though! With the end of daylight savings time, several timepieces refused to accept the change – so we had no choice but to leave, and search out more timely locations! Right across the lake was Arizona, which doesn’t use dsl, so when we got there, all the clocks were happy again!
Driving past Laughlin to Bullhead City.
Our intended destination was the Quartzsite area, so after partaking of some slightly cheaper fuel in Fort Mohave, we continued down through Lake Havasu, only stopping there to eat and stock up the food supply. By the time we were approaching Quartzsite, it was almost dusk, so it was an easy decision to head a ways down Plomosa road to find a spot just to spend the night.
After a quick bite to eat, and a ‘cat-walk’ for Hailey, we tried to hit the sack. But unfortunately, the blare of music from a group across the road even drowned out my radio playing inside my rig! Not having set up at all, it was easy to re-locate a mile or so further down the road, where at least the volume of noise was tolerable. I saw another rig pull out at the same time – likely for the same reason? I usually try to camp as far as possible from others, just to avoid situations like this. Sure glad I wasn’t all set up and unhooked.
Hailey likes to keep on top of the news!
In the morning, we topped off the propane in Quartzsite, and headed out to our recent favourite spot, at least a half mile from the nearest neighbour. Perfect!
We were camped north of Baker, Ca at what I think was the remains of ghost town Silver Lake. I bit of research showed the town existed from about 1906 till 1940 …
It turned out to be a pretty decent place to camp. In close to a week, vehicles only came by once, though some ATV’s were on the nearby powerline road, mostly on weekends. There is lots of potential firewood laying around, though we never had a fire because of the constant winds, and the possibility of a California fire restriction.
The only real downside was the amount of broken glass all around. I cleaned up some of the worst stuff close to camp, but there was plenty to go around, no doubt courtesy of small minded ‘target’ shooters.
Industrial traffic across the road on the dry lake bed.
I went for a look at the nearby Silver Lake cemetery. I thought all the graves would be from the early 1900’s or so, but there were quite a number of fairly recent graves, including WWII military vets, and some into the 2000’s.
The most prominent grave there is the one for ‘Death Valley Jack’, Harry W Nickerson, who was an early homesteader and pioneer, apparently responsible for improving a lot of the area roads. He was born in 1887, and died in 1932, aged 45.
“Nickerson was an early Mojave pioneer. He homesteaded at Halloran Summit and established a tourist stop that would soon be called Yucca Grove. It consisted of several stucco cabins, a cafe, and a garage”
Here’s a video I found, telling more about Death Valley Jack. https://youtu.be/Ljbe4TgeVwc
It was still fairly cool at the relatively high elevation at Baker, so we decided to look for some more lower elevation warmth. But first we took a detour down Cima road into the Mojave National Preserve to look at a place we had camped previously. But it was even higher and with the brisk wind, it was even colder, so we didn’t linger. We carried on through Nipton, Ca, and Searchlight Nevada, and down into Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Entry gates were closed (maybe because it was Monday?), and we found our way down about 6 miles of gravel wash to Six Mile Cove!
This road can be horrible with washboard, but this time it seemed to be in much better condition thankfully.
We met one rig headed out, and the second and last departed not long after our arrival, so we had the whole place to ourselves for at least the night!
To the casual observer, the trash situation here is much better than when we first visited years ago. And at least the huge dumpsters have covers on them now! But in spite of the improvements, I have been able to fill my 5 gallon pail many times with thousands of bottle caps and almost everything else. Venturing back into the bush produces a ‘gold mine’ of bottles, cans, paper plates, chip bags, and despite the three regularly cleaned outhouses, a disgusting array of TP.
Just a couple of pails of trash, from the many I hauled to the dumpster.
It is very quiet here at this time of year, and the huge dumpsters are virtually empty, but nonetheless, the big truck showed up to remove the almost empty bin with a completely empty one …
As you may have guessed, since I am not blogging from my yacht in Monaco … I did not win the $2B Powerball lottery recently! I was close though – I had six numbers. Problem is – none of them matched the winning ones! Another $2. down the drain!
Another test of a video – this time from Dropbox.
A major battle happening in our camp spot!
Luckily, I remembered to get up and have a look at the recent eclipse, but only my iPhone was ready for a photo, and the results were not very good! So, here’s one I took a day or so later …
We’re hanging out near Baker, California. Normally, we’d be south of here within Mojave National Preserve. I guess the monsoon season was hard on their roads though, and the Kelbaker road south of Baker has been closed for months. Of course, I didn’t discover this till we arrived, intending to head that way.
Photos from their website.
Due to some proactive scouting in past years we knew of some good alternate spots nearby that would work out just fine.
The white speck upper right is the spot we found. I think it is in the ghost town of Silver Lake, judging by the cemetery nearby.
I’ve got a few signs to add to my ‘Confusing and Misleading Signs’ file.
This one was at a gas station in Barstow. I was forced to contravene section 647(h), as I loitered around, waiting for the guy to show up and fill my propane tank.
I’ve seen ‘no loitering’ signs at laundromats (!), but also ‘no leaving clothes unattended’ signs. Maybe if you’re reading or online it isn’t considered loitering?
I trespassed on this property of Carl’s Jr in Baker, in order to have a meal inside!
I guess I could have been shot, or bitten here, but I escaped unscathed. I’m not admitting to taking photos, making notes, or graphic representations in this area!
Here I am just exiting the area behind the sign – after a leisurely tour of the area. Didn’t see any Blackhawk helicopters or drones tracking me either. Ironically, there is an alternate route into this area – with no signs at all to warn you of possible transgressions! And this road, and others behind the sign are legal BLM signed travel routes! I think the sign and regulation came from the 50’s, and they’ve never changed the regulations or wording …?
Now, if you do go several miles further back on this road, you do actually come to the boundary (not this sign) of Ft. Irwin military training center. And no – I wouldn’t trespass on that land!
Using Windows Live Writer again, and the one feature that I really don’t like is the way to insert videos. Actually, I did upload both of the videos below to Youtube, but getting them to show correctly in the blog is still a work in progress. Both photos below should be hot links to the video???? If not the other links should work.
https://youtu.be/lUc2ZJnXpt0
https://youtu.be/XAWSChYkMsk
