“It’s alive and waiting for you. Ready to kill you if you go too far. The sun will get you, or the cold at night. A thousand ways the desert can kill”
The Mojave is a desert of wind, temperature extremes, Joshua Trees and solitude. When most people hear the word ‘desert,’ images of tumbleweeds, rattlesnakes and bleak desolation typically come to mind. In reality, the Mojave is anything but a wasteland. Amongst the sand and sagebrush lie many places of beauty and wonder, and of historic importance. Some are the result of time and the elements, some are the result of man and his efforts to live in the Mojave, both in recent and prehistoric times. Let’s go see what we can find.
After making friends with several burros in Oatman, it was time to get back on the road. My next destination was Sitgreaves Pass, which tops out at 3,550 feet. The pass was named for Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves, who traveled through the area in 1851. I would be traveling along a very narrow, two-lane blacktop with no shoulders, crazy switchbacks and steep drop-offs plunging thousands of feet down. This is my kind of road.
Read MoreJoshua Tree National Park, the California Gold Country, forgotten places in the Mojave Desert. These are a few of my favorite things.
