spring break 2009, part IV: mojave road

The final part of our California road trip was driving the Mojave Road, starting Wednesday afternoon. We were still at my parents house on Tuesday when Daren got a call that his clients in Las Vegas were going to be out of town on Saturday, which is when he was going to meet with them. So in a mad dash of just a couple of hours, we finished all the laundry, ate dinner, packed up, and we left for Las Vegas around 9pm. Thank you so much to Gma and Gpa Airplane for such a fun time at their house!! And especially thank you for picking a couple of boxes of oranges, at the last minute, for us to take home--as Will says, "they are delicious!"

We finally met up with our friends, Scott and Claire, in Boulder City on Wednesday afternoon to head to the Mojave Road...

day 1: mile 0 to mile 6

The Mojave Road starts in the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation (in between Laughlin, Nv. and Needles, Ca.) at the Colorado River. We checked out the river (I grew up going to this river to jet ski and play around), took a few pictures, and then we were off!

Somehow I was the designated navigator, and I got us lost first thing even trying to get to the river! The pressure was on because Scott is a very experienced off-roader, and I didn't want to mess us up too bad. All in all, it was a good trip, and I only got us off course a few times, but it was easy to recover from.

We didn't go too far before we set up camp for the night (about 6 miles into the trail). Scott and Claire had driven down from Utah that morning, so they were pretty tired of driving, and the boys wanted what was left of the daylight to explore. We found a perfect spot to camp...but the two women who were testing for bats beat us to it by less than a minute, so we set out to find another. This is where we ended up, not knowing until the next day that this was actually on the Mojave Road.

We set up the roof tent on "mommy's car" and were ready for the night! It's amazing how much the boys have grown in a year, because it is getting more tight in there for the five of us, but it was still do-able.

Mmmm--hot dogs, chips, a diet coke, and s'mores for dinner...does it get any better? It was a beautiful evening, as we watched the sun set to the west and the full moon rise to the east.

day 2: mile 6 to mile 70

After a decent night's sleep, the boys were up and at 'em the next morning. They loved hiking around and exploring the area.

At mile 11 we arrived at the California and Nevada State Line. As you can imagine, Indy's hat got plenty of use on this trip!!

Just a few miles later Ben and Jake spotted these two places and just had to take pictures of them--obviously we didn't even slow down, so this is what they got when they took their pictures. As always, videos are completely banned when we are off-road. This all stemmed from an incident a couple years ago when we were at "Crusin Moab" with a bunch of other Land Cruiser enthusiasts. We hadn't been on a trail one morning for more than 15 or 20 minutes when Jake, who had been watching a movie, threw up all over the place--himself, the carseat, the car. Ya, it was lovely, and so there is no videos, but the boys don't care about that anyway when they are off-road. They love the fact that they can roll down the windows and hang out of them because seat belts are not required (in our car) off-road.

So this led me to a thought on this trip. I remember as a kid not having to wear seatbelts, and then the seatbelt laws went into effect, but my question is this--do you think that the seatbelt law was created by lawmakers trying to keep everyone safe, or do you think that enough parents complained that their kids were driving them crazy when they weren't belted up???? Just a thought...cuz they did drive us a little crazy, but not too much and they were having a blast!

Although this road was created by the Mojave Indians as a trade route to the California coast, there have been other uses for it since then. The book we used, Mojave Road Guide: an adventure through time, it said that the busiest time for this road was in the 1860's and 1870's, when it was used by stage coaches, freight wagons, troops, and even thousands of head of sheep and cattle.

"During World War II literally millions of American servicemen were trained in the California deserts for combat duty in battlefields around the world." The roads had these huge dips in them, and the landscape was pretty barren and isolated, but it was interesting to look around and try to imagine thousands and thousands of troops training right where we were.

Fort Piute was built in 1867 and was used by army escorts assigned to protect the mail riders along this part of the route. It was only in use for 6 months, and then a more southern route was created, so Fort Piute was no longer needed, but its foundation of rocks still stands today. Yes, I loved learning all of the interesting history facts along the Mojave Road because of my history background!

Jake found a cactus lying on the ground--I found out later that Daren thought it would be fun to taste it, but all it did was leave him a mouth full of tiny prickly needles!!

We found the most interesting places to stop for meals/sleeping, and this was no exception. This was one of those times the trail didn't match up with the book, where there was supposed to be a cattle guard but wasn't, but we didn't get too far before we realized our mistake. As we were turning around the boys spotted this old bus out in the middle of nowhere and insisted on going out to look at it--and it was a perfect time for lunch, although it was a bit windy!

A lone Joshua tree--I had fun experimenting with my new circular polarized filter, but couldn't take as many pictures as I wanted because of my dying battery!

Scott had a rifle with him, and it was obvious this bus has been target practice for many people, so the boys all gave it a go. This is Daren and Ben. All the boys talked about for the next little bit was Scott's gun.

This is Claire and Scott. Scott is now a fellow SLC firefighter, and he's our car mechanic, and we had a great time with these guys. You have to know that all three of our boys LOVE Scott and follow him around everywhere--just wait until you guys have kids of your own!! Jake loved picking wildflowers along the way and twice gave flowers to Claire. He's a ladies man already!

Will had to get a picture in with the monument to the Nevada Southern Railroad.

We drove through a "forest" of Joshua trees, which are cactus-type trees. We also saw plenty of lava rock along the way, which the boys thought was really cool.

For only a short distance on the trail we encountered pancake cactus--no, Daren didn't try any of these after his previous experience!! This other cactus plant was right next to the pancake cactus. I loved the variety of vegetation, or lack thereof, that we saw along the trail!

The barrel cactus was probably my favorite cactus that we saw.


A couple of places of interest we saw along the way. Photo 1 is the rock homestead cabin of Bert George Smith, a WWI veteran who suffered from the effects of poisonous gas and shell shock. "Bert, who was certified as totally disabled by the Bureau of Veterans Affairs, was sent to the desert to die [in 1929] with the hope he might live a little longer in this high desert climate." However, he lived here until the mid-1950's and ended up dying in a rest home in 1967. You just never know!

Photo 2 is a place called Government Holes. The first well was dug in 1859, and its most important role was as an operations point for the cattle industry, started around 1888. We saw the well still pumping as it is still used today.

I'm not sure if these are the Beale Mountains or the Marl Mountains because they were so close together. Anyway, this shows the terrain we were on for a good part of the day--up and down, up and down.

After a full day of driving, we camped out close to Marl Gprings at mile 70. Before we could get to setting up anything, Daren and Scott had to have their fun with their cars climbing the rocks and what not. Like Claire said in her blog, "crazy boys!"

In the meantime, the "other boys" were off exploring again. There were so many places to wander around, so many rocks to explore, and they had fun just being boys.

I have to include at this point, that over this whole California trip, not just the Mojave Road, that our boys became official Harry Potter junkies! Ben packed the movies for them to watch on the trip, and I asked him just before we left if he wanted any Harry Potter movies, to which he replied, "no." I threw the first one in just for kicks, along with the second Harry Potter book (since we read the first one a couple years ago on another road trip). Every road trip we've been on seems to take on it's own "theme"--last year on Route 66 it was the Indiana Jones trilogy, and this year it was Harry Potter. Mind you, we only had the one movie, and I just recently realized it is 2-1/2 hours long, but they must have watched it at least 7 or 8 times. Any of them can quote any part of the movie you want! Plus, Ben read most of the second book on this trip--he skipped around in the book for a while, and then started from the beginning, so maybe he did read it all. He's a reading junkie for sure, which I love. So even in the desert, he had to get his HP fix, as seen in photo 2.

For dinner the boys, once again, had hot dogs, chips, etc. and then went in the car as it got dark to watch more HP, while the rest of us enjoyed a beautiful sunset, delicious hobo dinners which Scott and Claire so kindly shared with us, and a warm campfire that we desperately needed because it was much colder that night than the previous one!

An overlook view of our campsite from the hills behind us, and another picture of our tent set up. I have to document all the cool places we camp out at with the tent.

day 3: mile 70 to mile 121, and then back to Vegas

The final day of our run on the Mojave Road just happened to be Donut Friday, which we religiously honor no matter where we are. We love the fresh ones from the gas station, but were still happy with Hostess powdered donuts in a box when we were out in the middle of nowhere. Cheerios and fresh picked oranges rounded out our breakfast that morning!

While reading through our book guide, I thought for sure we would be seeing quite the variation of desert life throughout our three day span--perhaps the "threatened" desert tortise, or maybe the Mojave Green rattlesnake, but alas, this little rabbit was the ONLY desert life we saw! Just the one, nothing more, nothing less. The boys were really hoping for the tortise, but what do you do?!

At mile 73.8 is the Mojave Road Mail Box, erected in 1983, and has a notebook in there to sign and leave any thoughts. I asked Ben to sign our names in, and when he started writing Jake's name, Jake had a major meltdown because he wanted to write his own name. Ben just left the book on Jake's tummy and walked away, so I had to get a shot of it. At this point, lying in the dirt was no big deal because we were all so filthy--of course, dirt never stops the boys from playing in it anyway...they are boys!

Here's my boys, and a picture of what else is in the Mojave Box besides the notebook--you name it, it's in there: water, tape, batteries, energy bars, etc. I'm sure the stuff in there could really help out someone who needed it. This was the last picture I took with my camera as the batteries died right there. Luckily I had Daren's little compact camera, and I've gotten quite a few pictures from Claire (THANK YOU!!).

As we were driving along toward Soda Lake I read in the book that we needed to collect a volcanic rock that would later be added to a marker at mile 100.7 called Travelers Monument, so we did...

...and this is Traveler's Monument out on Soda Lake. On our way there I showed the book to Ben and he saw that we were driving "through" a lake, so he asked if we were really going to do it, and I said "yes!" Then he said, "Well, goodbye life!" He always makes me laugh!!

Each of us added our rocks to the monument and read the plaque inside, but what it says is kept a secret for only those who travel there!! There is a very interesting story behind a little town off of Soda Lake, originally called Soda Springs but better known now as ZZYZX. I won't bore you with details, except that the doctor who named it that in 1944 created the name so it would be the last word in the English language, which still stands today I believe.

We also had our lunch (windy again) at Soda Lake, so it was only appropriate to take a picture of Will drinking a soda at Soda Lake!!

We had to pass through the Mojave River Floodplain to get to this point, where we got extremely lost (another one I don't know if Scott and Claire realized or not!), but amazingly enough found some carins which got us back on track! The boys were so excited when they saw this train bridge at the mouth of Afton Canyon, so we got out to look around.

I don't think this picture does it justice, but this was a beautiful part of Afton Canyon. There has been lots of mining done in this canyon.

Oh how the boys loved hanging out the windows!! Just like little puppy dogs!!

The final leg of our drive required driving through the Mojave River which was obviously quite deep. This is where we parted ways with Scott and Claire who continued on for the last 10 miles on to Camp Cady while we headed back to Vegas. We made it home late Saturday night and I think I was doing laundry for at least 4 or 5 days. It was way fun, and always an adventure together.

One final interesting fact I want to remember: the Mojave Road elevation started at 500 feet at the Colorado River, went as high as 4,557 ft. close to the Mojave Mail Box, and ended up at 1,410 at the Afton Canyon Campground. The terrain and scenery depended much upon our elevation, but each was unique and beautiful. Good times!!