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The List
The list brought us back to The Mojave National Preserve. We thought we had more than enough daylight to reach the first site. We also hoped we’d find a usable campsite in the area. The Lady navigated. It was a very convoluted route into the site with numerous turns. We found that roads on our planned route no longer existed and we had to find work arounds. The sun dropped closer and closer to the horizon. The elevation was close to 5000 feet. The temperature headed down like the sun. At two places we stopped and scouted ahead on foot, worked out a way to get the truck through extremely rough sections with the Lady spotting, and continued on. Finally, the road ahead was gone, destroyed, impassable. There was hardly a place to turn around, no place to camp. It would take us longer to extricate ourselves from the area then it took to drive in. Plan B would work for a campsite, but it was miles away. But Plan B it was. We had camp set up just as darkness came.
Plan B was a campsite we’ve used before. It’s a comfortable spot except for being severely overgrazed by cattle. It was cloudy and cold when we woke the next morning.
We decided to hike around Barber Mountain, but throw in a different ending. We walked over to Banshee Canyon and the Rings Trail to get us on the east side of Barber.
High outcrops and Mojave Yucca made for nice visuals.
We entered Banshee and quickly moved up the rings.
On the other side, we turned north on the Barber Loop Trail near the Hole in the Wall campground.
On the north side of Barber Mountain, we left the trail and climbed a saddle that overlooked Wildhorse Canyon.
We dropped into Wildhorse and intersected with the road there. The views and geology were nice.
We completed the loop when we returned to camp.
The evening light.
It faded away with subtle colors.
We enjoy hearing coyotes. We sat outside eating dinner at dusk. A coyote broke out in song across the canyon from us. Its song bounced down the canyon walls, turned around, and came back as an echo. Our friend the coyote thought it was another coyote responding, and answered back. This back and forth went on for over five minutes. We were in tears from laughing.
The next morning, we drove to Camp Rock Spring. An old homestead and mill site are above the spring, once the site of a small military camp.
We were more interested in who used this area before and if they left rock art.
We took our time exploring the spring area and canyon.
For our overnight, we found a nice designated campsite along the Mojave Road east of Kelbaker Road. The nearby cinder cones made a nice backdrop for the last rays of the sun.
The list came into play again the next day as we searched for a rock art site on the edge of a basalt flow.
Along the cliff band at the top, we found several small panels.
It was time to head toward home. A favorite dispersed site in the Panamint Valley served us well for the next overnight. We were both pleased and surprised a NPS volunteer stopped to talk with us. Her job is to check on areas in the park open to backcountry camping, especially the new reservable sites along Marble, Cottonwood, Echo, and Hole in the Wall roads. She says she gets out to Panamint Valley a couple of times a week.
This was a great trip. But we had one last special night before we returned home.
How long before we get away on another adventure?
I stopped overnight on the other side of that gravel 'trench' there in the Panamint. Backcountry Host visited and asked me to move. She pointed to the mound adjacent to the road "How bout here". I moved a truck length. I raked my foot and tire prints in the morning.
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