We finally had a weekend escape from Las Vegas – we know, we know. Isn’t Vegas escape enough? But really we have not even been to the Strip yet and the RV park has just been our “home” and with “home” comes errands and “projects” so we’ve had some pretty busy weekends.
So we unhooked Tigger and hit the open road on Friday morning and drove southwest to California a couple of hours. We entered the Mojave National Scenic Preserve and drove to the Visitor’s Centre at Hole in the Wall.
We did a cool little hike called “Ring of Loop” that took us through a couple of slot canyons and up the crevices via metal hoops. We drove out to the New York Mountains section of the preserve and found an awesome little private campsite. The park is run by the National Park Service and it does have a few official campgrounds. However, it also has several off the beaten path sites that are remote. We hiked up the “kopjes” near our site and enjoyed the isolation that we love so much.
Saturday we drove west and then south to the Kelso Dunes section of the park where we hiked to and up a dune. How exhausting! Can’t imagine what that would be like mid summer. Turns out we went up the hard way (straight up) but it was super fun going down!
Then we checked out Kelso Depot Visitor’s Centre which had a great photographic display of night shots taken in the Preserve.
We took Tigger off roading and explored some back roads and tested out our new departure angle now that we have this new rack on the back. Despite hitting the ground a few times, the only damage was a crinkled license plate. We have to be more conscious of our angles when driving those “dipsy doodle” roads.
We found another awesome back country site that night and spent a peaceful evening under a beautiful starlight night.
Sunday morning we hiked through what they say is the most dense Joshua tree forest in the world and that was cool. The hike took us up Teutonia Peak where we had a great view of the Cima Dome – a large 10 mile piece of land that has been raised up 1500 feet from the surface area.