4/2/08 (Wednesday): Hello from Williams, Arizona. We saw the Grand Canyon today. Wow! But I'm going to keep you in suspense for a little while longer about that. Tonight's blog will cover our trip from Piru through the Mojave Desert. Because so many folks enjoyed the maps on the trip West, click on this link to see our route East (so far): Map.






The ride along I-40 was spectacular--so beautiful that it felt as much like a vacation as arriving at our destination. We reached elevations of 6,000-7,000 feet. There was snow on top of some of the mountains, even though the outside temperature was very pleasant. There weren't as many wildflowers in bloom here (it was very dry) as in CA, but the ones that were in bloom were really neat. This is desert primrose. It grows out of the bare sand in basketball-sized clumps. Traffic was light and the truck and RV behaved beautifully.


Our first stop was Mojave National Preserve (still in California). We had the 5th wheel behind us, of course, so we didn't get to visit many of the spots we'd have liked because of road limitations. But it's a 1.6 million acre park, and we were quite content with the tiny fraction of it that we saw. Among other amazing sights we saw were: singing sand dunes, volcanic cinder cones, and desesrt wildflowers.




This is the Kelso Visitor Center, which is interesting in itself. On 1862, the Union Pacific Railroad wanted to reach the rich California markets and the ports around Los Angeles. To get there, it needed to construct a railroad line across the Mojave Desert. Kelso was crucial to reaching that goal. Construction of the line begain almost simultaneously in Salt Lake City, Utah and Los Angeles. The name Kelso comes from a railroad worker, whose name was drawn from a hat. The building dates from the early 1900's. We watched a very informative film about the Mojave Desert and then took a short walk.

On the 40+mile drive to the visitor center, we had a good view of the Kelso Dunes (the light colored dunes in the distance of this picture). These dunes were created by northwesterly winds carrying sand grains from a nearby dry lake bed. A mountain range traps the blowing sand. The entire dune system was created over a 25,000 year time period. The dunes are about 700 feet high and cover a 45 square mile area. The most interesting thing about them is that they make a booming or rumbling sound when the sand slides down the steep slopes. People drive a long sandy road, hike to the top and then run down the side to make the sand slide and boom. We didn't do this, but we heard the sound in the movie at the visitor center.

Just past Kelso Dunes, the mountains turned very dark (black and red) and had little or no vegetation on them. The whole area was volcanic, and we were looking at cinder cones and ancient lava flows. Scientists believe the cones range in age from 10,000 to 7 million years. And yet, in all those years, very little vegetation has gotten a foothold.






Our next stop in the Mojave Desert was Amboy Crater, an ancient cinder cone that was used to test the Mars rover. There were lots of lava flows--the whole area was so desolate it was hard to believe the eruption was about 6,000 years ago!

The next blog will be about our trip to the Grand Canyon (with a brief stop in the ghost town of Chloride).

Happy trails!