“Yeah, Desert Sky - Dream beneath the Desert Sky”
A drive through Joshua Tree National Park might take a couple hours, viewing the park from the road. An exploration of the park would take a lifetime. Joshua Tree National Park has over 550,000 acres of wilderness filled with a variety of plants and animals that make their home in this land shaped by strong winds, unpredictable torrents of rain, and climatic extremes. Every now and then, man intrudes in this wilderness and leaves his brief, passing mark among the surreal geologic features that cover the landscape. Let’s go see what we can find.
The Ryan Ranch Ruins at Lost Horse Well have intrigued me from the first time I saw them many years ago, whilst driving along Park Blvd towards a campsite at Jumbo Rocks. The stark, eroded adobe walls of the main ranch house have some kind of eerie allure that has drawn me to visit them many times since that first encounter.
Read MoreIt seemed like a good idea at the time. Park the truck along a turnout on the Geology Tour Road, leaving the relative safety of being on a maintained and a somewhat regularly traveled dirt road, and set off on foot across the desert to a somewhat formidable looking pile of rocks collectively known as The Towers of Uncertainty. Afterall, the name alone demanded a visit.
Read MoreI remember visiting this area when I was a kid and how excited I was to get out of the car, climb the hills and explore the tunnels and drifts that dot the Hexie Mountains. And now, many years later, it’s still the same. Even though I know hundreds of people have explored these old mines, places like this seem to renew that sense of adventure and discovery I’ve had since I was a boy. And that motivates me to hike the trails, climb the mountains and explore the backcountries. The gold I find are the pictures I take.
Read MoreJohnny Lang first saw Lost Horse Valley in 1890, when he and his father dove a herd of cattle into the area and set up camp. One morning, they awoke to find their horses gone. Johnny tracked them to the McHaney brothers’ (local cattle rustlers) camp. The McHaneys informed Johnny the horses weren’t there and he’d better leave the area. Some time later, Johnny met up with a man named “Dutch” Frank. Now Dutch had a rich mining claim, but was afraid to work it because of the McHaney boys. So he sold the claim to Johnny and his father for $1,000 and they named it the Lost Horse mine.
Read MoreThe only thing I knew about the Boy Scout Trail before today was that that the one-way distance was roughly 8 miles. And while it was on my list of undone things that I wanted to do in the park, in all honesty it was towards the bottom. But my brother somehow talked me into meeting him at the trail end near Indian Cove campground, leaving one car there and taking the other car to the trailhead inside the park (he didn't have to try too hard, I really don't need much of an excuse to head out to J Tree for a hike) . That way we could hike the trail the easier (yes, I admit it) direction, downhill. And when we finished, drive back to pick up the other car.
Read MoreJoshua Tree National Park, the California Gold Country, forgotten places in the Mojave Desert. These are a few of my favorite things.
