Mojave National Preserve

Well our Cormorants were still lined up on their roosting wire this morning when we got up, before sunrise, but it was quite bright out. Then they slowly drifted off one, two, up to five at a time over the course of a couple of hours. We watched one set of five birds take off, and fly in formation directly down river past the casinos as far as we could see with our binoculars.

 

We sat around in the sun, went up and had showers in the shower house, and went for a walk around the campground before getting away in late morning. We drove down over the bridge by the casinos, and up the far side of the mountain just across the river to the Davis dam just upstream from where we were, just a 10 minute drive. I walked down a trail that used to be a road, cut into the side of the mountain, until I was opposite where we had camped last night. Our campsite was just below that building to the right of center in the picture.

 

Here's our old empty campsite in the center of this photo.

 

And from the same spot, but turning to the left, here's a picture of the Davis dam that controls the flow of water in the river, and generates electricity. We had intended to camp near the dam, because I thought from the internet there was a campground there, but no such campground seemed to exist.

 

So, we set off deciding to go to Mojave National Preserve, which was about a 1 3/4 hour drive to the southwest. This was over a combination of several roads including Interstate 40 and several two lane roads. One of these was the old Route 66, and I don't think any maintenence had been done on it since it was established in 1926! The Mohave desert here is at higher elevation, 4,400 feet at our campground at "Hole-in-the-Wall," and the vegetation is much more lush and beautiful than the desert lower down, as you can see here.

 

There are just all sorts of plants that you don't see at lower elevation. Here's a cute little Prickly Pear type cactus that is only about a foot across, and it has little blooms across the tops.

 

The most prominent vegetation is the Mojave Yucca plant, which is everywhere.

 

Our first stop was at the Visitor Center at Hole-in-the-Wall, which is in an old western style building.

 

The desert was beautiful framed by the porch structure of the visitor center.

 

The campground (N35 02 45.6, W115 23 38.2) is just a 1/4 mile walk from the visitor center, and here is Miss Travelaire nestled among the Yucca plants. Miss Travelaire, of course, always likes to camp in a place that has "National" in the title, because she gets in half price with Doreen's seniors pass. So she only had to pay $6 to camp here in this beautiful campground.

 

Well, I haven't really been keeping up on astronomical events on this trip, other than Doreen and I enjoying the dark night sky in the remote areas of our camping, and seeing the very bright Venus setting in the west as Jupiter rises in the east. I didn't realize that Mars was also near Venus, and tonight as I looked up in the west, there was the Moon, Venus and Mars together, with a beautiful sunset to boot. You can see the crescent moon and Venus clearly in this sunset scene.

 

And here is Venus, Mars and the Crescent moon. Too bad I don't have a tripod with us; it's pretty hard to get a good picture without one.

 

Well, I didn't think I'd be able to post my blog tonight being in such a remote place. But even here in the middle of nowhere, AT&T has coverage, albeit, fairly slow!!